Many thanks to Dave, Charlie, Anne, Mel and Nicholas for their contributions at our meeting on Jan21st.
Dave’s talk on Sports photography was fascinating, many of his photos made you feel like you were at the event. It was informative of Dave to include those that didn’t work for him – look around the viewfinder for those damn pylons! Dave will try to let us know of forthcoming events which will be put up on the calendar but as he said there are GAA matches everywhere all the time! If members know of an event and are keen to go then email around or let us know via the contact page.
Charlie’s discovery of the dark side looks fantastic. Some beautiful imagery of birds in flight and birds wading. The outline he gave on the equipment used to capture those fabulous pictures was informative and the hours he puts in planning, preparing and executing a shoot are clearly paying off. We wish him much success in his efforts to bring others across with him.
Breaking news… Charlie has had one of this style of image accepted in the Nature section of the Prague Salon. Charlie has had a second, more conventional, image accepted too. Congratulations!!!
Anne’s flash photography overview complete with a bag of magical light paraphernalia was fascinating. Who’d have thought you could learn about flash photography by actually taking photographs?! Interesting to see the progression and improvement in lighting as Anne tried the various set-ups. The website she referred to is the Strobist & is a source of all things flash. Remember that the lighting is all in the eyes!
Mel’s documentary series photographs – the Ceili dance and the Disabled/abled body dancers – clearly conveyed the sense of the subject she was documenting. Interesting to hear how she knew before the shoot whether the final images would be in black and white or colour. A challenging form of photography – photographing in poor lighting conditions (without the use of flash so as to be unobtrusive) and then choosing those images that work with one another to tell your story.
Lastly, Nicholas gave us a brief overview of the use of shape, form, texture and pattern as compositional tools in photography. It’s easy to overlook these features as subjects for photographers and simple composition can be improved by enhancing one or more of these elements.