Hi All,
Firstly a Happy Easter Break and what fabulous weather we have. I see from our facebook page some of our lady members have taken advantage of the weather to get out with their long lenses for some nature snapping, I dare say we will see some results as winners in future competitions.
Well done to our Novice members, I thought there was some really good images shown last week for the Annual Competition and hopefully an encouragement to us all as we strive to improve our competence and techniques. I also thought the judge gave some excellent critique on were and how to improve even further. Next we have the Annual Open where we expect a much bigger entry so there won’t be much chance at critique although a lot of the entries will probably be the best from our monthlies so have already been critiqued and the improvements suggested have now been made. So this week is handing in night, up to a possible 12 entries per member, 2 colour, 2 mono and 2 nature in both prints and projected.
This week is a Studio Evening and we have two professional models, a male and a female with a fashion theme. We will have a selection of backgrounds including at least one grungy one (very popular) and although the lighting will be our continuous lights, I thought we might add a bit of colour ambiance by introducing a bit of balanced coloured flash. This will be entirely optional but might add a little something. Usual procedure when you sign in put your name on the rota list, there will be two photographers at a time so you might want to team up with someone you know or have worked with before. We plan to have two studio set-ups so, although due to numbers you don’t get lots of time with the models, you should still be able to walk away with a reasonable number of images. Also if you have any questions or not sure about camera settings etc then please ask for help well before your turn otherwise you are just going to waste your allotted time or slow down the process for everyone else. Big thanks to Colin Close who has found the models and made all the arrangements (not as easy a job as you might think). Any help with the setting up and running of the evening would be greatly appreciated.
There is no Early Session this week, our last week’s session on alternative software was on ‘Smart Photo Editor’ and our next session on the 30th is the same theme, so if anyone has a request for a particular alternative non-Adobe software please let me know.
Next Monday 29th we are having a Committee Meeting so if you have anything you would like brought up please let me know before Friday 26th April.
Last night I desperately put together an entry to the Robin Hood Open National Exhibition which according to the rules closed midnight last night (nothing quite like leaving it to the last minute or 11.40 pm in my case). It was not until I had uploaded all the entries when I spotted “for online entries the closing date is Saturday 4th May. I mention this as for those interested you now have almost another two weeks to submit your entry. An interesting feature of this exhibition is that they have a specialist camera phone/tablet section, something a few of us might like to try.
I know I have previously mentioned it but our AGM is on the 14th May and I will be putting out forms for nominations and proposals very shortly.
Time to call it a day and soak up some of that Easter Sunday sunshine.
Hope to see you Tuesday.
Best wishes.
Roger L