This was the final meeting for the calendar year and the last chance to submit photos for the Photographer of the Year competition. Thanks to all who entered and good luck! Judging will take place over the New Year break and results will be announced at our Annual Awards Night Dinner in February (date tbc).
This evening we had three very different presentations from Joe D, Anna and Nicholas and apologies to John for not leaving enough time for him to talk about the fabulous collaborative effort with the Bespoken Word.
Joe began the evening by describing how we might make more use of the lens aperture by creating bokeh, that out-of-focus area of an image. Joe’s presentation outlined both the technical aspects of and practical approaches to, creating bokeh. Members can follow this link to find a detailed account of the talk.
Joe followed this up with a quick run-through lens distortion and perspective, particularly wrt architectural photography. Again members can follow this link for more details. Thanks, Joe for your informative presentation and going to such great lengths to share your knowledge.
Anna, who only joined this year, shared some of the wonderful family portraits that she has been taking in recent years. Anna sees these portraits as a documentary of her children growing up and of their lives to date. As subjects, her children don’t care what they look like, whether they are laughing or crying and are not shy but neither are they performing for the camera. Anna prefers black and white images as she feels that colour can be a distraction. Many of Anna’s photos were taken quite close-up using a shallow depth of field with the focus invariably on the subject’s eyes. The image is not always a ‘head-shot’ she can focus on other aspects of the subject such as hands or feet etc. Thanks Anna for showing some of your fantastic photos.
Nicholas closed proceedings by talking about botanical drawings and the photos of Karl Blossfeldt and how both have influenced his photography and interest in the minutiae of things botanical.
We then proceeded to devour plate loads of cholesterol. Yum!
