WGPS Project Group – Next Meeting Friday 7th February 2020 at 7.30pm. Upstairs rooms.

This will be a practical evening looking at close-up and macro photography. As usual, it is open to any club member.

David Higton will open the evening with an explanation and demonstration of focus stacking. This will include taking the pictures and processing it in the computer.

Following that, members can split into small groups and work on their own subjects on individual tables. Results can be processed on the evening or later to be shown at the next meeting.

Ideally you will need to bring along:
1. Camera and suitable lens for close ups/macro. I will have a selection of lenses and improvised close up equipment available for those who may wish to try them.
2. Tripod
3. Suitable small subjects for photographing. We can swap them around during the evening.
4. Portable lighting, be it flash, desk lamps, LED torches or photo lamps. White card, crumpled kitchen foil on a board or other reflector. Black card to reduce light spill.
5. A background, be it paper, card, cloth , a light tent or……
6. Blue-tack, bulldog clips, masking tape, patience, imagination and a sense of humour and anything else you think useful.
Optional
6. Laptop with suitable software installed to process and stack photos.

For the first meeting of 2020 the packed audience were thoroughly entertained by Neil Hulme and his presentation “Moments in Mono”.

Neil started by explaining about having taken up photography some eight years ago and having ‘found’ his preference for a minimalist long exposure black and white style and the photographers, for example, Michael Kenna and Rohan O’Reilly who provided inspiration. He then took us on a journey of favourite locations from ‘a ten minute walk from home’ to his beloved Venice. He demonstrated over and over again that within a few minutes walk and certainly a few hours drive, for example, to the Wirral, North Wales and the Fylde Coast, there are so many potential photographic subjects but ….you just have to have the vision to see them.

The audience were fascinated as he explained his ‘unsophisticated’ post processing method which he demonstrated on several of his images which invariably resulted in an uncluttered and simple composition with a delicate tonal range.

Neil’s amusing anecdotes kept the audience smiling and his modest and humble attitude to his photographic achievements kept them absorbed as he walked us through his wonderful images.

A really enjoyable evening was had by all!

Neil’s work can be seen on www.neilhulme.smugmug.com, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram.

The results from Competition 3 Part 1 and Part 2 are now on the website along with the POTY rankings.

As we are now using PhotoEntry for our competitions, the rankings are different. This looks at all your entries across all competitions and puts them in descending order rather than in competition order i.e. all your winning entries are first followed by your second place entries and so on…….

MONTHLY COMPETITION – NOVEMBER 2019 – OPEN COLOUR

Michael Hilton’s excellent image,“One More Time”,  was rightly judged into first place in the Open Colour Section of November Monthly Competition.

The print competition was well supported with a great variety of types of photograph being entered.

This variety was recognised in David Royle’s “Wild Flowers’ which was placed second.

The judge, John Riley, then awarded Les Stringer’s impressionistic image “Lone Tree” third place.

Generally the entries were of a high standard and John Riley’s critique was helpful to all entrants by explaining what constituted a ‘strong’ competition image and suggesting areas for improvement on individual images.

For full results click on  to “COMPETITIONS”.

The rules and guidance have been updated to reflect the current status, to clarify the defination of monochrome and to update the Annual Competition category from Natural History to Nature as used by the PAGB and L&CPU. The new rules can be found here

Graham Currey blog post

Results from the recent competition are on the website along with thumbnails of the images can be found here

The placings for the photographer of the year can be seen on the PhotoEntry website.

Following a successful first meeting the next one will take place on Friday 1st November at 7.30pm. There will be a slight change to the normal challenges, as follows:

For 1st November,
1. Motion. As usual the interpretation is up to you but you might consider, moving subjects of any sort , human or mechanical, intentional camera movement, long exposure, flash with slow speed sync or ……..?

2. Birds eye view. This is really a non-competitive preview for the main club competition which will give you the opportunity to have your images critiqued before other club members who may be able to suggest refinements based on their experiences.

For 3 January;
Autumn. A longer term project to enable us to get the best out of the change of season without rushing it as we have done previously. The colours have started to appear already so start anytime you wish.

Just a reminder that one of the aims of the group is to get you to go out and take fresh pictures rather than dig into archives. (Rules can be broken sometimes though).
If everyone sticks to a reasonable number of images to last around 5 minutes it will give us a chance to make some comments/try alternatives and also ensure everyone gets to show their images on the night.

Bill

Dates for project group have been organised for Oct – Feb. They are on the club website!

Topics for the first meeting are “Orange” and “Summer”. Plenty of time to take photos for Orange….and technically, it is still summer!

For the Great British Summer competition, we are using the old uploader which can be found here https://wilmslowphotoclub.org.uk/competitions/pdi-competition-upload/

To whet your appetite for our speakers, an short biography and links to website can be found on the online programme. Click on the + in the top right corner  for each speaker to show the details!

The L&CPU are holding an Advisory day and Mock Adjudication for the PAGB Awards for Photographic Merit in Eccles on 29th September. It’s first come, first served – click here for more details.

Don’t forget , there is a reduction for early registration for next season on the Wilmslow Guild website https://www.wilmslowguild.org/

The Guild AV group is having a free open evening on Friday 13th September – all are welcome.

Details on their website

Following the Judge’s review yesterday the results of the Annual DPI competitions are available here

Special congratulations to Barbara Cook for a magnificent sweep across Colour, Mono and Portraits with some stunning images.

Following judging on Sunday and the Judge’s review yesterday the results of the Annual DPI competitions are available here

Three members of the Wilmslow Guild Photographic Society, had their prints accepted in the Members Exhibition of the 72^nd Southport National Open Exhibition of Photography and displayed in the beautiful setting of Wayfarers Arcade in Southport.  Southport has long been a leading National Photographic Exhibition and the overall quality of entry was very high, with 504 entrants submitting over 4000 entries in total this year.

The Photographic Society was especially pleased that Barbara Cook’s print ‘Together’ came first in the Open Colour print section, winning the Golden Jubilee Trophy. Her print ‘Snow Urchin’ did very well in the exhibition and won a Ribbon award. Barbara also had her print ‘Marta’ accepted.

The two other successful members with print acceptances were Les Stringer, with his print ‘Young Monks’ and Margaret Green with ‘Mont Blanc’.  The Society thanked Margaret for co-ordinating our entries and also organising a Society visit to Southport to view the exhibition.

left to right: Margaret Green, Les Stringer and Barbara Cook

Results from this and previous competitions are available here

Another enjoyable evening viewing another set of top notch images.

Hold your breath for the results of the Photographer of the Year Competition to be announced at our next meeting – the final scores are VERY tight – reflecting the high quality of entries in all this years comps.

We have Peter R to thank for suggesting the next two themes, as usual you can enter images for either or both  themes. Resizing the images to 1600 x 1200 pixels is not critical for the Project Group but necessary if you want to use them for club competition purposes.

The interpretation is up to you, both subjects lend themselves to using either observed or contrived (sorry created) pictures.

1. Broken

2. Clashing Colour

Bill Salkeld

Results from this and previous competitions are available here

Photographer of the Year results have also been updated Photographer of The Year 2018-19

The Themes!

1. Illustrate a favourite photographic tip or technique.   As much as an exercise for yourself in before/after or with/without or ?? The idea of this is to show others something which they may not normally consider doing. It might consist of several frames outlining a photographic process or include some screen grabs if post processing forms part of it.
2. Looking Up. (or a View from Below, in the same spirit, and the opposite of, the theme from last November). This should get us all out and about!

Bill Salkeld.

Another excellent set of entries for our recent Print competition – Open Colour & Conceptual/Fine art. Some really excellent entries in a challenging Part 2.

Results from this and previous competitions are available here

Photographer of the Year results have also been updated Photographer of The Year 2018-19

Next meeting, Friday 15th February 2019 at 7.30pm.

The themes are:

1.  ’Smoke’  or something similar commonly referred to as smoke be it water vapour, a smoker vaping, a car exhaust or whatever. It doesn’t need to be the main subject as long as ‘smoke’ is clearly visible within the picture. 

2. We had to resort to the cards for this,  ‘Photograph a watch or other gadget the style of a glossy magazine  advert’.

This is a good one for a wet day, lighting, impact and sharpness being key requirements to consider. 

As ever the interpretation is up to you.

Bill Salkeld

The next meeting will be on Friday 18th January at 7.30 pm.

We will be looking at the themes of:

1.      High key
2.      Natural History, macro.

Further provisional dates are Fridays the 15th February, 15th March & 26th April

Bill Salkeld

Following the shoot and show night, for the next meeting we will go back to the conventional format.  The date has yet to be fixed but hopefully it will be mid-late January.

For anyone who has shot images on the Edward Weston pepper theme and was unable to get to the meeting, or for those who did attend and have reprocessed any images, if you bring them along, we should be able to find time to show them.

In the meantime, we have two new themes for the next meeting.

1. High key
2. Natural history, macro

The interpretation is down to you!

Merry Christmas

Bill Salkeld

Another excellent set of entries for our recent DPI competition – Open Mono & Food/Product

Results from this and previous competitions are available here