PEOPLE, PETS & PERFORMANCE BY RICHARD BOWN

Richard is a member of the GAMMA PHOTOFORUM which is a small group of around 30 enthusiast and professional photographers representing a high standard of Photography. Richard came along to the club on the 2nd February to share some of his images. His people shots were wide ranging from formal posed portraits, candid portraits, street images and sports. His sports images were fascinating too, a number of rugby shots taken of his local club in Harrogate and, since he’s a keen skier, some shots of ski jumpers from below against a clear blue sky. His pet shots were varied also but perhaps the most interesting ones were those relating to performance, some taken at rehearsals for the youth theatre and others at the actual performance, some great shots of a drumming group. There were also some amazing shots taken at a juggling convention.
The presentation was digital but Richard brought along 60 or so prints which were spread around for us to enjoy afterwards.

Open Competition – for this a club enters 15 images, no author can have more than four images and there must be at least 6 authors. All images are judged as pictorial so natural history images are effectively discouraged. Our entry had images by 10 authors

Small Club – this is for clubs that feel they cannot produce a satisfactory entry for the open competition. 10 images are submitted by at least 4 authors and no one can submit more than 4 images.

Nature Each club may submit a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 21 images The Winning Club will be decided on the aggregate of the 10 highest scoring images. No author can have more 3 images. We entered 16 images by 6 authors.

The club will be holding its biennial exhibition of members’ prints at the North York Moors Railway Education Room at Pickering Station between August 31st and September 10th. This provides all members with the opportunity to display a selection of their work and it is hoped that every club member will submit a maximum of three prints into the exhibition.
There is no ‘selection or judging’ of images; subject to the availability of display space all prints submitted will be displayed.
The only criteria for submission is that the prints must be mounted on Antique White mount board sized at 500mm x 400mm. Also full backing board will be required on the prints to facilitate hanging.
Mount board and backing board are available from the Club and we will arrange a print order in due course.
There is no restriction on the size of the print itself provided it can be mounted within the 500mm x 400mm mount board.
For those who have not previously had the opportunity to mount prints, if there is sufficient interest the club will be holding a ‘print mounting session’ (most probably at Wrelton village hall).
Alan Clark, with the assistance of others, will be organising the exhibition.
We hope, as in previous years, that members will offer their assistance by giving a little time to help supervise the exhibition. We have been asked by the NYMR that the exhibition is supervised at all times.

The Developers Group net at Wrelton on 8th December. Nine hardy souls braved the elements and 7 brought along images from the last project – Autumn colour. I’m always amazed at the variety shown, obviously trees and leaves both close up and distant, landscapes, ferns, reflections and some firework images – encouraged no doubt by John Wells visit a couple of weeks ago. John showed some firework images with the background darkened as suggested by JW, then we played with some to invert them as shown by JW. Looking at others images always stimulates discussion and some suggestions were put forward as to how they might be improved so we tried the suggestions. One suggestion that kept coming up was to darken the images thereby increasing the saturation of the colours and this is simply achieved by moving the mid-tone slider in Levels to the right. On another landscape image it was suggested that the middle of the image was a bit bland and samey and we thought that by moving the top of the image down to form more of a letterbox the image could be made stronger. We did this by copying the top of the image to a new layer and moving that layer down, then using a soft brush at low opacity we erased the bottom of the layer to remove the obvious join. The image was then cropped. We then went on to look at some of the selection tools and how they are used and what can be achieved after making a selection. We decided that out next project would be Christmas (with a twist maybe), so we look forward to seeing these images when we meet again on 9th February 2012.

Unfortunately the meeting on the 9th February had to be cancelled due to the adverse weather conditions, the next meeting is on the 22nd March.

Monochrome Group - Alan Clark

Creative Group 26‐Jan‐2012.
A small but like minded group of people looking at cds about creative photography.
Two e‐mails had been sent to me from David Richardson the other from John Nicoll, these had some amazing photographs.(Check this young man out) 21 year old Swedish Photographer Erik Johansson (just Google his name).
David Ireland brought along The Solihull National Exhibition Acceptances for 2011 some excellent photographs, (you can also see some of these on the net).It was a good night with plenty to discuss.

My weird effort..........."The Wall Flowers".....For those who don't know about" Wall Flowers" it's the name teenagers were given when going to the Dance Halls, and when inside leaning up against the wall and never dancing, just eyeing every one else up.........This was in the 60s.
Mike Ward 

Ian Cameron is a professional landscape photographer operating under the banner ‘Transient Light’, a term he has adopted to describe light, which for a short duration transforms a scene from ordinary to extraordinary, before returning back to the mundane. His work is widely acknowledged and instantly recognizable. To see examples of his work and the workshops he runs check out www.transientlight.co.uk 
Ian is coming down from beyond Inverness so to cover the additional expenses we are going to invite members of other clubs and have it as an all ticket event. The cost of the ticket includes free entry into a draw for a signed copy of Ian’s book ‘Transient Light – A photographic guide to capturing the medium’. The event will be held, as usual, in the hall at the British Legion Club and numbers have to be limited to 100. So the sooner you get your tickets the better. Tickets are now on sale to members (and their guests) - see Janet and will be on sale to non-members from early November.