Fun, friendship. President s Report. Buy, Swap, Sell Presidents monthly report

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1 October Fun, friendship and Learning President s Report Buy, Swap, Sell Presidents monthly report Hi Everyone, The Cherry Festival Photography Competition is over for this year. Thanks to all of you who entered and or helped make it a success. The quality of the photos seems to get better year on year, and the junior entries were up on previous years which I hope is a good sign for future years. For those who haven't been to the club recently, the Trust have had blinds put up to the windows, so we can now use the projector regardless of the sun shining. This months meeting is all about the club awards for 2018, the Hargreaves award is being held over until next meeting. As this is the last report for 2018 I would like to take the opportunity to wish each and everyone of you a Very Happy Peaceful Christmas and a Prosperous and Healthy New Year and look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting or the Christmas lunch. (Date to be sorted). Cheers Trevor President: Trevor Faulkes Vice President: Gail Douglas Secretary: John Van Rijswijk Treasurer: John Van Rijswijk Publicity: Narelle Howard Events Organiser: Narelle Howard Shutterbug: Gail Douglas Public Officer: John Van Rijswijk Supper: Moya Van Rijswijk OFFICE BEARERS

2 Results Camera Club Comp A GRADE Subject Birds Eye View 1st Gail Douglas Birds Eye View 3 2nd Gail Douglas Birds Eye View 1 HC Gail Douglas Birds Eye View 2 C Tracey Dawson Mountains A GRADE Open 1st Gail Douglas Sunset 2nd Gail Douglas The Boys HC Gail Douglas Muumm JUNIORS Open 1st 2nd HC JUNIORS Subject Birds Eye View 1st 2nd HC LARGE PRINT 1st Gail Douglas - Company Dam 2nd Please note the change in the club competition: B Grade will be suspended. A Grade only subject/challenge and open class. Meta Data to written on back of photo. Junior and large print remain unchanged. Subject/challenge to be announced at previous meeting and included in Shutterbug. All photos must be taken within one month of comp. Photos must be sole work of entrant. Member must present photo in person or via a sibling only. Monthly comp to be judged/critiqued by guest presenter. Print sizes and presentation to remain unchanged. Next meeting is the 13th February Subject/challenge is Brian Hargraves Memorial One print only. 6 x8 that has not been exhibited/ judged anywhere previously. Just a note. Can members please bring a prize for the club night raffle (under $10.00). UPCOMING EVENTS I d like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year. Stay safe and take lots of photos. I found this little verse whilst surfing the internet. This Christmas, may you have the fulfilment of seeing around you the people you love the most. May you have the satisfaction of creating special memories they will remember with pleasure forever. This Christmas, may you feel peaceful and contented, knowing what Christmas means, and celebrating it your way. Regards Gail

3 Black and White in the Outdoors: Learning to see in Monochrome A Post By: David Shaw To determine when black and white is the best option in nature photography, you need to learn to see your scene in black and white. Most beginner photographers arrive at their monochrome images by experimenting with post-processing. While this occasionally works, shooting with black and white in mind results in far better images. In other words, you need to SEE in black and white. Look for Contrast Highlights In color photography, there are almost unlimited options to juxtapose contrasting and complementary colours or to provide an attention-getting subject in a flashy tone. But in black and white, you lose the ability to use color in the traditional way and are instead left with shades of gray. Contrast, rather than color, is our compositional tool. Most of us see the world in rich color and there is no saturation slider in our eyes or brains with which we can switch color on and off. But we can train ourselves to see contrasts. As I m writing this, I m looking out my window onto the spruce trees in my front yard. The sun is shining on a layer of fresh snow which fell over the past few days. The limbs of the spruces are draped in white. Looking south, toward the low sun, I can see flashes of perfect white where the sunlight is illuminating fresh snow. Those bright highlights contrast sharply with the dark, shaded trunks and exposed branches of the trees. In fact, even in the shaded areas, the difference between the snow and the dark needles is remarkable. With little color in the scene to begin with, it doesn t take much to see this scene in black and white. Because I can see this scene clearly in black and white, I can recognize that images like this will translate well from color. Here, let me step outside for a few minutes and make a few photos, to show you what I mean. (A few minutes later ) I m back. I ve pulled a few images and did a quick black and white conversion in Lightroom. Here are a couple of shots; first color, and then black and white.

4 Black and White in the Outdoors: Learning to see in Monochrome (Cont) This is a straightforward example. As most people can see, lacking many colours, the snowy trees were a likely subject for black and white. However, the next step is harder. Color Contrast I had another black and white shooting session a few months back when seeing in black and white was much more difficult. Each fall, I make a pilgrimage from my home in Alaska s interior to the Kenai Peninsula. This year, I spent a day exploring the forest and mountains of Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park, across the bay from the town of Homer. I hiked for several miles through the wet forest making images of the rising autumn colours, and the fog-draped mountains. It was a sea of greens and yellows, red highlights, greys, and browns. Some images were perfect for color, others not so much. Telling the difference in the field was a game I played as I walked. Some black and white images were clear in the gloomy forest. The dull yellow, jagged leaves of Devil s Club against the muted greens and browns of the forest floor were an obvious contrast that I knew would translate well into black and white. Others, like the pale green of fern fronds, were less contrasty in the field, and yet translated beautifully into shades of gray. These ferns were dying back at the end of the season and were largely a dull brown. Kind of ugly really. However, the color doesn t matter in black and white, and the contrast between the pale brown fronds, and the deeply shaded background worked.

5 Black and White in the Outdoors: Learning to see in Monochrome (Cont) This patch of ferns was pale green and popped against the darker green background. This is my favourite image of the series. It was a shot that took me a moment to see in black and white. Another shot of an autumn stalk of bright red fireweed, I thought would look good in black and white when I first made the image, but upon examination of the back of my camera in the field. There was actually little contrast in brightness between the greens and red. That image didn t work quite as well. Lighting Contrast Later that same afternoon, bright sunlight started to filter through increasingly thin clouds. It wasn t yet hard light, but it was bright enough to be directional. The sun came through the forest canopy in patches, illuminating and shading different areas. And this brought about a third option for black and white: lighting contrast. In the differing light, even similar colours will contrast in black and white.

6 Black and White in the Outdoors: Learning to see in Monochrome (Cont) Beyond Details Seeing a large scene in black and white is the next step. I was photographing by a lake this fall. It was early in the day, the sun not yet far above the horizon, but any lingering sunrise color had faded. Most of the lake, some rising fog, and the surrounding mountains were in shadow. Aside from the sky, there wasn t a lot of contrast. I was about to pack it in for the morning when the sun got high enough to illuminate a patch of fog, which flashed white in this scene of muted blues. Not much for color, I thought, but in black and white? That, I realized, would work. Terrible Light At times, when photographing in harsh light, black and white can also salvage an otherwise impossible situation. A number of years ago, I was shooting in the altiplano of Bolivia. I arrived at mid-day at the spectacular and weird Laguna Colorado. It was savagely bright; cloudless skies, high elevation, middle of the day, and within a few degrees of the equator. Lighting conditions couldn t have been worse. While the landscape was uniformly drenched in harsh, ugly light, there was contrast in the colours of the desert. A polarizer darkened the sky and removed the worst of the glare. The resulting black and white conversion, was if not perfect, at least the best of a very bad situation.

7 Black and White in the Outdoors: Learning to see in Monochrome (Cont) Frequently travelling photographers find themselves in beautiful locations at bad times, and we don t always have the freedom to return when the light is better. In such situations, consider black and white. It s not a cure-all, by any means, but nasty light will often translate better into monochrome than full color. The situation I described above was not unique on my trip through Bolivia. The sweet light of morning and evening lasted only minutes in the high desert, quickly replaced by glaring light. And yet contrasts in the landscape salvaged many a scene for me. Conclusion If you can recognize a black and white subject in the field, it will open up your eyes to new compositions you may have previously ignored. Black and white photography is not simply the removal of color, it is a way of seeing. When next you venture outdoors with your camera, look at the way colours and even shades contrast with one another. Look for lighting conditions that cause contrast to appear and embrace those situations in the form of black and white photography. Even on those days with rotten, bright light, consider how removing those washed out colours might help your final image, sometimes black and white can salvage an otherwise desperate moment.

8 A Post By: Darren Rowse Learning about Exposure The Exposure Triangle Bryan Peterson has written a book titled Understanding Exposure which is a highly recommended read if you re wanting to venture out of the Auto mode on your digital camera and experiment with it s manual settings. In it Bryan illustrates the three main elements that need to be considered when playing around with exposure by calling them the exposure triangle. Each of the three aspects of the triangle relate to light and how it enters and interacts with the camera. The three elements are: 1. ISO the measure of a digital camera sensor s sensitivity to light 2. Aperture the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken 3. Shutter Speed the amount of time that the shutter is open It is at the intersection of these three elements that an image s exposure is worked out. Most importantly a change in one of the elements will impact the others. This means that you can never really isolate just one of the elements alone but always need to have the others in the back of your mind. 3 Metaphors for understanding the digital photography exposure triangle: Many people describe the relationship between ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed using different metaphors to help us get our heads around it. Let me share three. A quick word of warning first though like most metaphors these are far from perfect and are just for illustrative purposes: The Window Imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close. Aperture is the size of the window. If it s bigger more light gets through and the room is brighter. Shutter Speed is the amount of time that the shutters of the window are open. The longer you leave them open the more that comes in. Now imagine that you re inside the room and are wearing sunglasses (hopefully this isn t too much of a stretch). Your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in (it s like a low ISO). There are a number of ways of increasing the amount of light in the room (or at least how much it seems that there is. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger). Ok it s not the perfect illustration but you get the idea. Sunbaking Another way that a friend recently shared with me is to think about digital camera exposure as being like getting a sun tan. Now getting a suntan is something I always wanted growing up but unfortunately being very fair skinned it was something that I never really achieved. All I did was get burnt when I went out into the sun. In a sense your skin type is like an ISO rating. Some people are more sensitive to the sun than others. Shutter speed in this metaphor is like the length of time you spend out in the sun. The longer you spend in the sun the increased chances of you getting a tan (of course spending too long in the sun can mean being over exposed).

9 Learning about Exposure The Exposure Triangle (Cont) Aperture is like sunscreen which you apply to your skin. Sunscreen blocks the sun at different rates depending upon it s strength. Apply a high strength sunscreen and you decrease the amount of sunlight that gets through and as a result even a person with highly sensitive skin can spend more time in the sun (ie decrease the Aperture and you can slow down shutter speed and/or decrease ISO). As I ve said neither metaphor is perfect but both illustrate the interconnectedness of shutter speed, aperture and ISO on your digital camera. Update: A third metaphor that I ve heard used is the Garden Hose (the width of the hose is aperture, the length that the hose is left on is shutter speed and the pressure of the water (the speed it gets through) is ISO. Bringing It All Together Mastering the art of exposure is something that takes a lot of practice. In many ways it s a juggling act and even the most experienced photographers experiment and tweak their settings as they go. Keep in mind that changing each element not only impacts the exposure of the image but each one also has an impact upon other aspects of it (ie changing aperture changes depth of field, changing ISO changes the graininess of a shot and changing shutter speed impacts how motion is captured). The great thing about digital cameras is that they are the ideal testing bed for learning about exposure. You can take as many shots as you like at no cost and they not only allow you to shoot in Auto mode and Manual mode but also generally have semi-automatic modes like aperture priority and shutter priority modes which allow you to make decisions about one or two elements of the triangle and let the camera handle the other elements. A lot more can be said about each of the three elements in the exposure triangle. Check out other relevant posts on the topic at: 1. ISO 2. Aperture 3. Shutter Speed

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