Members' Panel Evening

Members were treated to a varied and enjoyable evening on 17th June. Six colleagues presented personal photographic projects they were working on.

Graham Sykes started off showing a series of inspiring infra-red photographs that he had taken on his lockdown walks close to his home. His technical explanations were a revelation to those of us who have yet to dip into IR.

Mary Rogers treated us to a series of images during her local lockdown wanderings including wildlife and normally busy locations. Her view of hay burning was particularly atmospheric.

Tony Renshaw presented his ‘Nature in Lockdown’ selection of images mainly taken during his morning exercise in local woods. His showdown between a Miner Bee and Wasp was a noteworthy capture.

George Fewster showed us some macro images taken at Knowsley Safari park and then a number of remarkable macro setups at home which resulted in some striking abstracts from refracted glass and the study of a dandelion clock shown here.

Barbara Sheldrake showed us something completely different. Turning the clock back around 170 years she explained how to make wet-plate collodian images on glass plates and then shared some of her images produced using this 19th century photographic craft.

Alan Stopher rounded off with a project which is work in progress. Starting from a topical subject ‘Protest’ he showed a range of images taken in recent years and then took us back to demonstrations from the early 1980s. The older ones were taken from black & white negatives and the more modern digital work had been converted to mono to achieve a similar documentary style.  

All in all it was a fascinating 2 hours demonstrating what talented photographers we have in our club.

Alternates to Adobe for RAW Processing - Lecture by Duke Gledhill

This week we were treated to a lecture by club member Duke Gledhill, delivered by Zoom. The topic covered was Alternates to Adobe for RAW Processing, showcasing a few options our members might not have encountered before.

As ever, it was a thoroughly researched and in-depth look at a number of pieces of photo editing software, including but not limited to:

• Adobe Lightroom

• Capture One

• Luminar 4

• Topaz Denoise AI

It was a fascinating and rare opportunity to see several programs running side by side at the same time. It was certainly striking how different the same photo looks when opened with different software, even before any processing has been done. Perhaps most striking for many was how well noise - the bane of many photographer's lives - is handled

Duke presenting his lecture

straight out of camera. All would agree that Capture One seemed to handle it significantly better. If that doesn't sell a few copies I don't know what will.

If that wasn't the highlight, a few heads were certainly turned by the creative tools on offer in Luminar 4. In particular, the ability to replace a sky at the touch of a button.

Maybe this will inspire our members to look at other options for processing in the future?

June Monthly Challenge - Light, Mood & Atmosphere

On Wednesday evening on the 3 June the club held its first ever critique via Zoom.

Thirty six members uploaded images via Dropbox on the topic of their take on Light Mood and Atmosphere. The volunteered critiquers were Richard Fulcher and Tony Renshaw who, over the next hour and a half, split the images between themselves and provided a detailed critique as to how well, in their opinion, the images fitted the bill.

Prior to the Zoom event members had voted for their favourite three images. At the end of the session three images came out top: First Alan Stopher’s "Nick Harper plays Small Seeds", Second Richard Fulcher’s "Alone Again" and thirdly Duke Gledhill’s Venetian scene. James Gibson, Competition Secretary organised the technology and kept both reviewers to time.

Personally I took away two main learning points firstly I must give Topaz de-noise a try and secondly get out there and keep on taking pictures!

1st place:

Nick Harper plays Small Seeds - Alan Stopher

2nd place:

Alone Again - Richard Fulcher

3rd place:

Venetian Scene - Duke Gledhill