A fun evening last week with the knockout competition, and many congratulations to the winner, Julie Hall! A couple of things I found fascinating – firstly, that the two halves of the hall consistently voted slightly differently (does sitting near a radiator make you prefer cooler pictures?), and secondly that the voting on very many occasions was very close, and that there was no absolute consensus on which was the “better” picture in almost all cases. This suggests to me that judges have a very hard time picking winners, and certainly are not going to please everyone all the time. Having said that, I do think Julie’s image was a worthy winner, and was my favourite image of the evening – perhaps I should be a judge…
Coming up this week we have two treats. Jenny’s early session on creative photography should be something special – here sessions are always something to look forward to. For the main session we have local photographer Steve Rabone. You should have seen Jan’s email about this alst week, but just in case I’ve cut and pasted some of it below:
“Steve is a photographer based in the Redditch area who works across a wide range of genres – from close-ups in nature and urbanscapes to creative photoshoots and post-processing. He originally came from a drawing and painting background, and his creativity really shows in the way he designs and lights his images. He also lectures at a local college and offers one-to-one training, so he’s very used to explaining ideas clearly and encouraging others to experiment.
His talk for us is titled:
“Still Life and Flower Photography”
Steve will be sharing how he approaches building a still life, working with flowers and everyday objects, controlling light, and using composition and post-processing to create striking, artistic images. It should be full of ideas you can try at home with fairly simple kit – perfect inspiration for those evenings when the weather (or the light!) isn’t playing ball.
I’m really looking forward to this one – it should be an enjoyable, practical and creative evening.”
We had quite a few more sign up for the New Year’s party last week – but there’s still room available so please get your money/forms in to Linda next week if you want to attend.
Finally, a quick note about the parking situation at Avoncroft. We are trying to work with the site management to find solutions to the issue of limited car parking availability on Tuesday evenings, and I hope we’ll be able to find a way to solve the issues soon. In the meantime, please can I ask a) that everyone remembers the car park is going to be full, and – especially if arriving early – try to make sure that you are taking up as little space as possible and park close to existing parked cars to minimize wasted space, and b) if you find yourself blocked in and wanting to leave early, please do ask for cars to be moved (and move cars promptly if asked), even if it means interrupting proceedings temporarily to do so. I know the situation is frustrating to everyone, but if we can all work together we can keep the inconvenience as small as possible under the circumstances. Sadly at present some double-parking is going to be inevitable.
Look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday
Richard