This month’s featured photographer is Noel Courtice.
Since joining the CCC about four years ago, Noel has been an enthusiastic contributor to our competitions, especially CAPA. Now retired from his career as a pharmacist, Noel seized the opportunity to take an African Safari a couple of years ago and returned with many once-in-a-lifetime pictures. The beautiful garden at his home also provides him with excellent photo opportunities. A small sample of Noel’s work can be viewed on our Photo In Focus page.
This month’s workshop meeting kicked off with our Photo Fixer segment, featuring Bill Godfrey. Bill demonstrated how he uses Nik Software to enhance tonal contrast, boost detail, introduce lens blur, add an oval vignette, change the shot to black and white and put a border around the picture. You can download a fully functional, 15 day trial of Color Efex Pro 4, Silver Efex Pro 2 and Viveza. Free on-line tutorials are also available. These programs are a staple of many of our Advanced members.
Paul Schmoldt presented CAPA’s best shots from this year’s Altered Reality competition, which contained some truly inspiring work. Great job on the slideshow Paul!
A video demonstration on How A Camera Is Made gave us all a deeper appreciation for the technology that we often take for granted. You can see it again here:
Les McCracken reviewed our displayed prints and complimented several fine efforts.
Our newest member, Chad Barry, showed The Club how he achieves variations of a picture by adding clouds using Photoshop layer masks, changing the shot to black and white, turning a photo into a night scene and overlaying a texture. There are several good tutorials available on YouTube for those interested in learning Chad’s methods.
Our next meeting on February 26th will be highlighted by CAPA competitions for Open and Nature. The CCC competition for the Novice group is Panorama, while the Intermediates and Seniors will enter photos that feature Repetition. See the Meeting Schedule page for more details.
Photography is the art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.
Our Photo In Focus feature this time around is Angel Rublik.
Traveling to our meetings from La Salle, Angel is an enthusiastic shooter who enjoys all types of photography. Always anxious to learn, she makes excellent use of her artistic ability and has made great strides in her knowledge in the year and a half that she has been with The Chatham Camera Club. Have a look at some of her work in our Photo In Focus section.
This month’s main meeting featured the judging of our CAPA entries for Sports Action as well as Club competition for our Novice group in the One category and Intermediate and Advanced in the Panorama category. The top scoring images by Colin Cooper, Angel Rublik, Dave Noordhoff, Harry Arneill, Doug Cooper, Paul Schmoldt and Mike Blazek, can be seen in our Club Photos section.
Jim Pollock showed us the various tools he uses to modify flash, including:
Our first meeting of the new year, called Novice Night, was an evening of instruction in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Elements. Adam Harpula, Dave Noordhoff and Jim Pollock provided tutorials that were designed to show the power of these programs and encourage those not shooting in RAW to venture into a brave, new world. Several members expressed their thanks and we look forward to doing more of the same in the future. Because of the length of both programs, Margaret Manson graciously agreed to re-schedule her 15 Minutes Of Fame to another meeting.
Our topic for print display was Black and White Portrait, which saw several fine examples of this type of photography.
Dave Noordhoff gave a brief tour of our website and urged us to explore the pages and links provided.
Our next meeting, on January 22nd, will feature
CAPA Judging for Sports Action
Club competition for Novices: One
Club competition for Advanced and Intermediate: Panorama
Our final meeting of the calendar year featured Mike Blazek’s segment on High Key Portraiture, a lighting technique in which the background is two stops lighter than the subject. With the help of our lovely model, Chanel, Mike used a white paper background, a softbox as a key light and two shoot-through umbrellas to make several beautiful images. The Club offers its thanks to Mike and Chanel for a very informative evening.
For more information about High Key Lighting, watch this YouTube video.
For something simpler you can do at home, check this out.
Our CAPA Co-ordinator, Herman Giethoorn, reported the scores from our latest submissions in the Nature and Open categories. Several good marks helped The Chatham Camera Club rank in the middle of the pack, which is quite respectable for an organization our size.
Thanks to Andy Stockdill for the pictures from our recent Christmas Breakfast. Great job Andy!
The Prince of Prints, Les McCracken, reviewed our displayed photos, pointing out several strong images. We would encourage all of our members to bring Black And White Portraits to our next meeting, Tuesday, January 8th, 2013.
Time did not permit Dave Noordhoff to show his tutorial on Removing All But A Little Colour, but you can view it now by clicking Leaving Just A Little Bit In.
Great gear is all very nice, but it’s the six inches behind the camera that makes a photograph.
Our evening began with reviewing and judging this month’s CCC photo competitions. Our Novice members contributed their Things With Wings shots, while Intermediate and Advanced members competed in a challenging category called One, which focused on a single item, standing alone. As always, many excellent and imaginative pictures were displayed, with Top Scores going to Mike Moynihan, Angel Rublik and Paul Schmoldt. See our Club Photos page to view all of the entries that scored 23 or more.
The highlight of the evening was our guest speaker, Dave Chidley, a professional photographer based out of London, who graciously found time in his busy schedule to show The Club some of his most interesting photographs. Dave’s presentation was filled with insightful pictures of people, travel, news and sporting events. Among the most moving were his shots of life in Africa, which showed the amusing, the emotional and the heartbreaking side of their everyday life. Some of Dave’s work there can be seen at the web site of Art For Aids International, an organization dedicated to educate people about HIV and AIDS and encourage them to play an active and creative role in the global AIDS response through art.
Dave also shared some of his photography knowledge with these pearls of wisdom:
I’m no better photographer than you. I just try harder
You only get good pictures by seeing opportunity
Colour shows the clothes. Black and white shows the soul
Look for F.B.I. – Foreground, Background, Interest
Photography is the capture of light. Nothing more
The Chatham Camera Club wishes to thank Dave for his thought provoking presentation and we look forward to seeing him again in the near future.
Our next gathering will be the annual Christmas Breakfast on December 8th at 9 AM at the Chatham Breakfast House. Be there or be square.
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
The Chatham Camera Club was saddened to learn of the passing of Keith McLean on November 20th at the age of 90. “Old Buzzard”, as he called himself, hosted several of our summer picnics at his 300 acre property on Country Rd. 15, just outside of Rondeau Park. His 2 acres of lotus ponds made a fascinating place to take photos and Keith was always pleased to have us and any other visitors stop by. He was earlier quoted as saying “There’s no admission. It’s free. No donations are accepted.” You can see some pictures of his wonderful gardens in our Club Photos section.
