I’ll update the rest of this post with a summary of the AGM soon however the themes for next season are below.

Congratulation to David R for his winning image ‘Colours of the City’ in the Chairman’s challenge. Also to Steve S for 2nd place with ‘Flip’, and to Monica and John for joint 3rd.

Date for your diary – Opening evening 14th September 7:30pm at The Guild for Lifelong learning.  We are thinking of having an evening photowalk on 7th September in Altrincham – more details to follow.

The competition & themes for next season are as follows – dates to be follow.

Informal Competition – April 27th

This is an open theme, either colour or mono and will be a knockout competition voted for by the people in the hall at the Guild (sorry Zoom attendees).  All the images should be new images, however you will be able to enter them in next year’s competitions.

Please upload 3 images to PhotoEntry before April 25th

Chairman’s challenge – May 25th

The theme for this is “Movement”.  This could be a great action shot, intentional camera movement, a combination of both as I’ve tried to do or whatever else you think fits the theme. Once again, the winner will be decided by popular vote. In case you’re wondering, I’m ineligible so won’t be participating.

Once again, please upload 3 images to PhotoEntry.

Important

Next week 30th March, the speaker is unable to come to the Guild and hence this meeting will be a “Zoom” meeting, and there will not be a meeting in the Guild.  Please check your emails from Monday for the link to the meeting.

Also, we have had to switch a couple of meetings due the speaker having a clash

4th May:        Members evening
18th May:     75th Southport National Open Exhibition Presentation

The online calendar has been updated to reflect this.

Some External Competitions You Might Like to Enter

L&CPU Annual Individual Competition
Our “local” competition & free to enter.  For prints & digital images.  Closes 23^rd April.
See: https://lcpu.org/2022/03/annual-individual-print-projected-image-competition-rules/

Edinburgh International Salon
The hardest photographic salon to get an acceptance from, in the world. For unmounted prints.  Closes 1^st June.
See: http://www.edinburghphotosalon.org  (when they fix the domain name)

Photographic Society of America PSA Annual Large Print Exhibition
Despite the name it’s being organised and exhibited in that great USA state of ‘The Wirral’, at Hoylake, this year.

For unmounted prints; also despite the name, of the normal competition size.  Closes 6^th June.
See: https://psa-photo.org/index.php?psa-annual-2022 or https://psa-photo.org/useruploads/files/exhibitions/psa-annual-2022-large-print.pdf

An Invitation to Chapel Camera Club’s Exhibition
Twenty  Twenty … and Beyond
 
Chapel Camera Club is delighted to invite you to
an exhibition of photography in Gallery 2 at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery between 5th March and 2^nd May 2022.
Opening times are 10am – 5pm
( Please note the museum is not open on bank holidays)
 
This award-winning camera club is  featuring  30 self-portraits from its Arts Council’s funded project, ‘Living Through Lockdown -Personal Perspectives in Photographs’ together with photographs of a wide variety of subjects.
 
Visitors to the exhibition will enjoy viewing:

• 30 self-portraits from its Arts Council’s funded project,   ‘Living Through Lockdown -Personal Perspectives in Photographs’.
• 48 members’ framed images of a wide variety of subjects
• The 3 winning images from our Peoples Summer Photo Competition
• A 5 min TV presentation of members’ Lockdown quotes, and further members DPIs on a variety of topics
• 2 cabinets illustrating the club and member’s successes by means of medals, certificates and ribbons
• A grand total of 112 exhibits

 Each Saturday afternoon, during the exhibition, the club is holding ‘Meet the Photographer’ sessions. Visitors will have the opportunity to meet members to find out more about the club’s weekly events programme, mentoring opportunities, and to talk about their own projects, or just photography.
 
For further information please contact Ann Carter (Vice Chair)  ann@coffeecups.plus.com

Royal Geographical Society – The Three Stripes South (a free online talk)

Royal Geographical Society – Three Stripes South: The 1000km thru-hike that inspired the Love Her Wild women’s adventure movement (rgs.org)

Hello,

At last some sunshine and signs that Spring is on the way – hope you can get out and about with your cameras!  Hopefully, life is getting back to normal and we can all get some great images to share, and discuss.

Next week, we will review images from the PhotoEditing challenge – there’s still time to upload your versions to PhotoEntry if you haven’t already done so

Last week we had the second print competition of the season and it was great to see an increased number of entries including one A4 size.  We will keep the rule change to allow unmounted and mounted prints in the future and look forward to seeing entries from as many of you as possible.  Congratulations to the winners last week, the results mean that there are three points between first and second place, so the last competition will be exciting! You can view all the placings on PhotoEntry. Please get in touch if you don’t have a login

Upcoming meetings

2nd March we will meet in the Guild, and hopefully broadcast the proceedings to those who have elected to join remotely.  As the meeting will involve discussion between members in the Guild, it  may be difficult to hear what’s going on.

9th March – we have a remote speaker and the meeting will be online only, we will not meeting in the Guild

16th & 23rd March we will meet in the Guild, and hopefully broadcast the proceedings to those who have elected to join remotely.

27th April – Informal competition This will take the form of a knockout with member voting. It will be an open theme.  The number of images has yet to be decided.

That’s it for now, take care

David

Back from Devon, after the first day the weather was good for January- even managed a sunset image and no, I didn’t go for a dip!

I enjoyed the images and talk on Alternative Yosemite by Dave Wyman.  Here’s the link to his website  http://dave-wyman.squarespace.com   and he can be found on Instagram @davewyman if you want to follow his work.

Image editing challenge

The link with the three images for everyone to edit was in my last email and you can upload your finished versions to PhotoEntry in the adhoc section.  There was a wide range of interpretations when we did this last season, so the review evening should be interesting.

Creating a dream winter scene

You may be interesting in this video on how to create a dream winter scene. Creating a Dream Winter Scene with Felix Hernandez

Thanks to Ken for sharing this.

Vivian Maier UK Exhibition

The first ever UK exhibition of the work of legendary street photographerVivian Maier will be held at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes between June and September. Tickets can be booked on the Gallery website.

Next meeting

This is a three way battle with Melbourn (in Cambridgeshire) and Hebden Bridge.  There won’t be a gathering at the Guild, this will be on-line only.  Let’s hope we do as well as the four way battle last month.

Last week, we were back in the Guild for the first time in 2022 and it was great to see everyone.  It was the 4th competition of the series, Mono and Geometry PDI.  There was a healthy entry in both sections, with David Royle winning the mono and Mary Dolan winning Geometry – well done to both.

In the POTY, John O’Brien is 7 points in the lead with 4 others in close contention – the last two competitions will be interesting.  If you wish to see the tables, log onto PhotoEntry and select “show series results” – all will be revealed.

Next competition

This will be a print competition, no need to mount the prints this time but you can if you wish.  For the panorama theme, the print can be 600mm wide otherwise normal rules apply.  Don’t forget to upload a PDI  for each print to PhotoEntry.

Also next week is the last week we will be meeting in person at the Guild before the closing date for competition 5 so if you can get your prints ready for hand in then, that would be most helpful.  If not, talk to David to discuss hand in.

Next week, and beyond

As I’ve said above, next week (26th Jan) we are meeting in the Guild. Login details will only be sent to those who have elected to join via Zoom.

2nd Feb, this will be online only as we have a speaker from California, and on the 9th Feb it is a 3 way battle with Melbourn (Cambridgeshire) and Hebden Bridge. Once again, this will be online only.

4 way battle with Knutsford (KPS), Manitoba (MCC) and Winnipeg South (WPSC)

We’ve received the results from this and Canadian judges also placed us first.  The Canadian judging was based on three judges. It’s been an enjoyable battle.  Here are all the scores.                            

Last week, we had another interest talk by Steven Le Prevost, the images he showed certainly fitted the impressionist theme and he gave a lot of useful info on how he produced them – thanks for Michael for organising.  The link to the recording will be sent by email.

Wildlife Photography Exhibition in Wilmslow

Whilst walking off my Sunday brunch today, I passed the ICE art gallery on Water Lane and spotted this notice.

Tim Flach’s website has excellent images, so it may well be worth popping in to take a look.  There isn’t any more information on the ICE galleries website however this also contains some of Tim’s images

Competitions

Next week, we have competition 5 which is PDI and we will be meeting in the Guild for this, I hope to see you all there. 

Competition 5 will be a print competition and to encourage more people to enter, you don’t need to mount your prints.  Two sections as usual – open colour and panorama theme, and we are allowing the panoramas to be up to 600mm wide.  For those new to printing, a lot of people use ds colorlabs although other options are available.

Upcoming meetings

Just to confirm that the meeting on Jan 26th will be in the Guild, whilst both the speaker on Feb 2nd and the 3 way inter-club battle on Feb 9th will be online meetings.

Other items

As I mentioned on Wednesday, the PAGB Masters of Print 2021 Exhibition is being held at Wilkinson Cameras Liverpool from Jan 15th to 30th.

Take care,

David

I hope everyone is well, had a great Christmas and your celebrations weren’t affected by Covid. With the rise of the Omicron variant, I realise that people may be less comfortable with meeting in the Guild.  Fortunately, the programme this year has been designed for more online content in Jan/Feb if necessary and the first few meetings will be available online.

Next meeting 5th Jan – Interclub competition

The entries are in for this four way competition between ourselves, Knutsford, Manitoba and South Winnipeg.  This will be held over Zoom to allow as many Knutsford and Canadian members to attend. For logistical reasons, there will not be a meeting in the Guild for this on the 5th January.

If you haven’t received the zoom link via email by 3rd Jan, please check your junk mail thoroughly and then let me know. It’s better not to leave this till the 5th Jan as I’m unlikely to have time to respond between finishing work and joining the meeting.

Following this, the meetings on the 12th and 19th Jan, these will be available to everyone via Zoom.  If people want to attend in the Guild on these dates, please let me know and we will see this can be arranged.  If I don’t hear from you, I will assume that there isn’t any interest.

Competitions & Judges

We’ve cleaned and adjusted the projector in the guild and hopefully,  images will now project ok. Please bear in mind that the judges do get to view the images at home before the judging so will have seen them on a calibrated monitor.

Whilst I’m on the subject of judges and compeitions, there is always discussion about how judges comment and how to reduce their criticism. I found this judging special newsletter on the PAGB website interesting although I’m not sure I’ve put any of it into practice yet!

52 week project and other ideas

Mary is running the 52 week project this year. If you wish to join in, please get in touch with her.  It’s a relaxed group and the sharing and discussion of images is via a separate Whatsapp group.  Also, many of the photo sites on the web are full of projects for the year.  Here are a few on the ephotozine website.  These are a great way to keep your motivation up, particularly at the moment.

Exhibitions

For those of you interesting in entering the Southport Exhibition, the deadline is 14th January. More information can be found here.

The Smethwick International exhibition is judged between the 8th and 16th January. You can book online at their website if you wish to join the judging and the prints can be viewed free of charge on their website from the 8th Jan

Hello,

I’ve sent my weekly email on Friday 3 Dec, if you haven’t received it please check your spam folder.  Here are the link from the email for future reference.

Hello everyone,

My weekly email sometimes fails to reach everyone so I thought I’d write a weekly blog that contains most of the information.  If you see the blog and haven’t received the email, please check your spam folder to see if it is there.

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Next meeting is in the Guild

This is a member’s evening, chaired by Michael as I’m on my travels again.  He is giving a talk on cyanotype, Steve is showing some of the new features of Lightroom and tips on processing.  There will also be a review of the images from the Wyming Brook, and from the Wilmslow Photo walk. Please help Michael set-up the equipment at the start of the meeting, and help put is away again.

17th November is closing date for upload of images for Competition 3 which is PDI and has the Open Colour and Landscape categories. At the end of the season, we will share top PDI photographer, print worker however there won’t be any trophies for these just the overall POTY.

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Tim Clinch

On the 3rd of November Tim Clinch entertained and informed us with his Zoom talk on smartphone photography.   He mentioned his new venture, Two Photographers, being himself and Joanna MacLennan. They have free weekly on-line discussions, creative photography workshops, mentoring, consultation and more.  For more information visit https://www.two-photographers.com.

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Southport Open Exhibition

Here is a flyer with information for entering the Southport Open Exhibition.  Our members often enter this competition and we have an evening next year when Trevor Davenport from Southport PS will be visiting us to show the winning entries.  This year it is a digital-only competition and entries close on the 14^th of January.

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“The FIAP Photo Academy – Reza Deghati (free Zoom event)

The Power of Photography for Humanity – Reza Deghati

The FIAP Photo Academy Online Events is very pleased to announce that we will host a presentation from the Paris Based Photographer Reza Deghati on Sunday 28^th November 2021 

A philanthropist, idealist, humanist, Reza’s career began with studies in architecture. He has gone on to become a renowned photojournalist who, for the last three decades, has worked all over the world, notably for National Geographic. His assignments have taken him to over a hundred countries as a witness to humanity’s conflicts and catastrophes. His work is featured in the international media (National Geographic, Time Magazine, Stern, Newsweek, El País, Paris Match, Geo…), as well as a series of books, exhibitions and documentaries.

Along with his work as a photographer Reza is also a volunteer, committed to the training of young people from conflict-ridden societies in the language of images, to help them strive for a better world. In 2001 he founded Ainaworld in Afghanistan which trains people in information and communications through the development of educational tools and adapted media.

Reza has exhibited his work Memories of Exile at the Louvre Carousel in 1998; Crossing Destinies on the railings of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris; One World One Tribe in Washington DC; War+Peace at the Caen Memorial; Hope in Doha; and Windows of the Soul in Corsica. More recently the giant panorama A Dream of Humanity was featured along the banks of the Seine during the summer of 2015, showing portraits of refugees around the world.

He is the author of 30 books and the recipient of many awards.

During his presentation Reza will present an overview of his work and his actions in different regions and topics, including Afghanistan illustrated with the best iconic visuals. 

Paul Stanley

Director, FIAP Photo Academy Online Events”

I’ll send the Zoom link via Email so you can join this meeting.

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Other news

We will be having an informal Christmas get together as listed in the programme at a local hostelry, I’ll send details nearer the time.

That’s it for now, see you all on November 24th

David