This evening's meeting kicked off with some of Derek's slide shows. We were shown several collections of images, starting with a couple of short ones. The longer sequence which followed contained aneclecticmix of pictures, I don't think I have ever seen the Eurofighter Tornado and mating damsel flies in the same sequence before. Derek then picked out some of the images and explained what they were and how he had gone about shooting them.
The second half of this evenings meeting was a very comprehensive instruction by Martin Tomes showing us how he deals with his digital images from downloading the camera's card to having it ready for printing. Sadly time did not allow him to show us fully final preparations for printing.
Our last meeting of 2009 found us with Christmas Fare - nuts crisps mince pies and mulled wine brought by some members (who I will not name as I do not know who they were sadly; but thank you)
We started the evening with the presentation of a cup by Paul to Chairman Peter which he won at the recent Sussex Fed P I competition for the Best Image_his study of 'Katie'. Peter could not come to the competition as he was away and this all came as a complete surprise to him. Very well done Peter.
Chichester triumphed yet again! But enough of them, what about the team that came second? You guessed, it was us!
A great effort against the giants of the competition, we were ahead at the half way stage, but were pipped at the post with their last print which scored a 20, giving them victory by 2 points.
Star of our show was Derek with his “Golden Eagle with Kill” that won great praise from the judge Liz Boud. Honourable mentions went to Daisy for “Upper Cast Neighbourhood” and Ian with “Male Broad Bodied Chaser”.
Judge Ian Betts
Our second projected image competition had 54 entries submitted for analysis by our judge for the evening, Ian Betts. Ian, from Henfield Camera Club, judged our 3rd PI competition last season when he marked in the range 14 to 20. On that occasion he gave five images the lower end of the range of 14 points. This time only one image received that mark and it would be prudent not to mention who the photographer was.
Judge Graham Smith ARPS
A big change from last months judge with 36% of the 58 entries achieving top marks (18-20). This was very much in line with Graham’s approach to judging, although his marks were down on last year. As usual the held backs were numerous which meant that John and I earned our money as competition secretaries.
The competition was held at Hailsham and six of our members attended. The judge was a very amusing gentleman by the name of Clive Tanner.
In Round One, Daisy Kane was only awarded 15 points for her beautiful picture of an Indian lady surrounded with her cooking pots, which must have disappointed her greatly (she was there). Paul and I both agreed that when projected here, it lacked the real colour saturation that it had when viewed elsewhere previously. This is one of the problems with P. I.s in my opinion. Slides were always the same.
An evening of two halves, the first was me talking about High Dynamic Range Imaging and the second was Roy presenting the practicalities of wedding photography.
I started with a presentation of the whys and wherefores of HDRI. I followed that with demonstrating how to take a set of exposures and use Photomatix to tone map them in order to create a printable image.
I recommended two books:
Paul gave us a really amusing talk on his trip to Antartica towards the end of last year.
He had us smiling and laughing throughout with his descriptions of his companions and some of the incidents that occurred, all the time showing his wonderful images of the ship, the rough seas and the fantastic Arctic scenery; but above all, his wildlife shots of the penguins, seals, sea lions and the birds with a 'winning shot' of an albatross in flight.
