Shoalhaven Photographic Club Inc. Blah Blah Newsletter

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Volume 4 2017-18 12 July 2018 Shoalhaven Photographic Club Inc.

com Secretary: Bruce Williams Mobile: 0401 065 053 willigofasta@gmail.

Club. Vicky is the current president and Linda the incoming president.

1 Volume July 2018 Shoalhaven Photographic Club Inc. Blah Blah Newsletter President: Dan Crowley Last assessment night: Small Wonders Mobile: M dan.crowley@bigpond.com Secretary: Bruce Williams Mobile: willigofasta@gmail.com Treasurer: Barbara Reed Committee: Robin Pitcher Terri Ford Sam Anderson Yvonne Young Judges for the evening were Vicky (left) and Linda (right) from the Kiama Club. Vicky is the current president and Linda the incoming president. Being relatively new to judging, they chose to team judge and were able to complement each others thoughts and comments for each image which worked very well. Dan Crowley s photo of an emerging butterfly was voted as photo of the month. The subject is indeed small, it s wondrous and, with the inclusion of some vegetation in the corner of the image provides a reference to scale. Technically the image was excellent: blurred background with a homogeneous, non distracting colour Keep focussed 1

2 helped isolate the subject and it was nice and sharp without being overly done. Excellent photo Dan and well deserving of POTM. Life After Chrysalis. Keep focussed 2

3 In fact it was a Dan Crowley double, with his monochrome image of a bird that took the people s choice award. Once again, the same comments regarding a well isolated subject against a muted and out-of-focus background apply. Composition here was also very pleasing to the eye with the bird perched in such a way as to give it room to gaze across the negative space on the right side of the image. Golden head Cisticola A small observation from Wednesday night. There were only two B&W images in the set subject. I m not sure if members are reluctant to do B&W but it s a very rewarding process and, just possibly, it might increase your chance of getting a credit or merit from less competition!!! Anyway, in case you are interested I have included some notes about B&W conversions at the bottom of this newsletter. Fell free to read or ignore as you wish. Keep focussed 3

4 Next Workshop: Food Photography This promises to be a fun and tasty night. The idea is that members will bring along a plate of food for us to first photograph and then eat! I suggest it may be a good idea to join with one or two other members and bring along a joint effort so that we don t have too much food. Try to produce something colourful and, taking a leaf out of Master Chef, artistically plated up. We will set up some light stations on the tables in the foyer for the evening. UoW Exhibition: Thanks to everyone for getting behind this second exhibition. It s great that we have a few new exhibitors as well. As I am writing this I still have a number of frames available - one A3, one A4 and ten 10 x8. Can we please have some 10 x 8 in prints. A single A4 piece of photographic paper is more then big enough for a 10 x 8. Just crop the print boundary down to the correct size. I already have some of the prints but could the rest of you please bring your image(s) along to the food presentation workshop or, if you will be way, ask someone else to bring along. Finally, could you please send me a small thumbnail of your image to be placed on a catalogue sheet. I would like the image itself, the title of the image and your name. If the image is for sale then please add a sale price as well. Attached below is the catalogue sheet from the last exhibition so you know what it will look like and it will give you some idea of sale prices. Trivia Night: Just another reminder that we will have en evening devoted to fun on 22nd August. This will be in lieu of a traditional workshop or presentation. Lots of laughs and, of course, a few prizes on offer. If you haven t already done so, start getting a team together - it s never too early. I think teams of four would be ideal. Don t forget your spouse or partner. You might be surprised how much they know! Why not be prepared and bone up on a few photographs facts in advance. You know the sort of questions - photographic history, famous photographers and so on. Photo Competitions: 30th Sutherland Shire National Exhibition of Photography 2018 (SSNEP) APS Approval 2018/14 Opening date: 1 st June 2018 (Accepting entries) This is an all digital exhibition with entries to be submitted online via the exhibition website. Online Entry Form: Keep focussed 4

Includes the following sections:- - Open Colour - Creative - Open Monochrome - Nature Entries Close: Sunday 12th August 2018 Kayell Online Portrait Photography competition It is an annual, national

5 Includes the following sections:- - Open Colour - Creative - Open Monochrome - Nature Entries Close: Sunday 12th August 2018 Kayell Online Portrait Photography competition It is an annual, national photography competition for amateur, enthusiast & professional photographers alike. The competition has one of Australia's largest prize pools of $60,000 including $25,000 in cash on offer. 3 categories, Open (Professional), Amateur and Student. A great opportunity for your members to comb through some past portraits or to go out and shoot some new ones. Entries for the Online Competition will close in only 3 weeks. Website: Facebook: Keep focussed 5

6 Black and White conversions Why Black and White? It s a creative choice B&W images possess a timeless quality colours no longer distract B&W highlights shape, form, patterns etc B&W emphasises negative space B&W you see light differently B&W helps emphasise motion How to get good Black & White conversion candidates Think about shooting black and white rather than conversion: it s a different mindset It will exercise your photographic eye and help you to see light differently Get as much tonal variation in camera as you can. Use the histogram and blinkies to check for overexposure. ensure the highlights do not clip. It does not look natural to the eye When taking the picture DO NOT OVEREXPOSE. Better to underexpose because with modern digital cameras you can recover amazing shadow details but not blown highlights. Therefore consider setting a -1/3 to -2/3 exposure compensation. IMO B+W images require strong contrast to be successful. All the other elements like lighting, depth of field etc as the same as for colour - still necessary Filters Yellow or warming filters are flattering for portraits where skin is shown. evens out blemishes Red filters will blacken out a blue sky Green is good for landscapes but not skin. gives a richness to foliage and grass Practice using a digital filter in camera while familiarising their effects Processing considerations Aim to preserve the tonal range while at the same time increasing contrast Aim for balanced tones. can be high key or low key bit try to include some tones from the other end of the histogram and have smooth roll offs between tones. Having some black and white is necessary to allow the viewers eyes to be calibrated to the scene. high/low key is the best way to create mystery/mood. low key is preferable. high key is often unnatural high contrast: not smooth but not necessarily unattractive. it s OK to let small areas clip to white. photojournalistic images are expected to be like this high key/low contrast: sometimes a good thing such a foggy scenes in landscapes, where there are layers of hills or mountains Should I use Lightroom or Photoshop to do my B&W conversion? Lightroom is non destructive - no changes are made to the original file. Lightroom simply remembers how to display your original image with the adjustments you make. I advise making a virtual copy of any image before making any edits, including B&W conversion. These will be stored next to the original and can be stacked to reduce clutter. When you export a file you have converted in Lightroom the image file will be exactly the same size regardless of which method you choose - that is there is no loss of file quality Photoshop is a pixel editor. It can make permanent changes to your image files. That may be just what you want, or if you save those changes unintentionally it could be a disaster! The method you choose for the conversion does make a difference! Keep focussed 6

7 Fortunately Photoshop can also be non-destructive, if you follow a couple of simple workflows. 1. Make a duplicate of the image and, giving it a different name, work only on the duplicate. 2. Use the Camera Raw filter inside Photoshop to make non destructive edits (works exactly the same as Lightroom) and open the image as a copy. 3. Duplicate the background as a new layer and work on that layer, keeping the original untouched. 4. Convert the image to a smart object before editing. You can re-edit a smart object as often as you wish. 5. When finished and saving your new B&W gile, choose Save As and give the image a different name. How to do B&W conversions in Lightroom There s a few methods but basically they all do the same thing. You just take different paths to get to the same end result. 1. In Library module: Go to the top menu. Choose Photo>Develop Settings>Convert to Black & White (Shortcut V ) 2. In Develop module: Go to the top menu. Choose Settings>Convert to Black & White (also shortcut V ) 3. Also in the Develop module: 3.(a)from the Basic panel click Treatment: B&W; 3.(b) still in Basic panel: Saturation slider left to -100; 3.(c) from the HSL/Colour/B&W panel; 3.(c)(i) move all the HSL saturation sliders left to (c)(ii) move all the Colour saturation sliders left to -100; or 3.(c)(iii) click B&W for Black and White Mix How to do B&W conversions in Photoshop 1. Convert using the Grayscale option 2. Convert to Grayscale by deleting two of the three colour channels, either Red, Green or Blue. 3. Convert to Grayscale by deleting the a (tint) and b (temperature) channels from the Lab colour mode. 4. Make static adjustments to your image using the Image>Adjustments menu to: 4.(a) Desaturate; 4.(b) Choose the Hue/Saturation option and drag the slider to -100; 4.(c) Choose the channel mixer which offers several presets (mimicking a lens filter); 4.(d) Use the Black & White adjustment function. 5. Make use of adjustment layers to make your work non destructive. 6. Add some clarity: perhaps, no more (less is more). 7. Tone curve: minimal adjustments if any. Photoshop does it better. 8. Details: to be honest, I hardly ever touch the details slider. 9. Noise: Same with noise. I don t touch unless the image was shot with a high ISO. 10.Grain: You can try it. for example Kodak Tri-X look-alike with grain amount 40, size 20 and roughness 60. There are 3rd party programs which create film looks with the press of a button. 11.Effects: add some vignetting perhaps. 12.If satisfied, export to a new file. (my suggestion is a TIFF file) Discussing the merits of each of photoshop s different B&W conversion methods gets very technical and you need a sound understanding of the workings of Photoshop to get your head around it. It s probably a bit too much here but I am happy to include in a later newsletter or send you my notes in full if you would like to send me an requesting I do that. Hope you have enjoyed reading this newsletter and please come to the Quiz Night. I promise there will be no questions about photoshops black and white conversion options! Keep focussed 7

B&W Photos from Colour:

B&W Photos from Colour: Quick and Dirty Methods for PS, PS Elements and Canon Software 8/1/2007 New Westminster Photography Club Derek Carlin New Westminster Photography Club Page 1 Introduction This is a very brief article on