Human and Animal portraits

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An evening of prints and projected images of portraits, both Animal and Human, gave us a wide range of images for what on paper sounds a fairly narrow definition.

Many thanks to Julia Cleaver for judging and being flexible to work around the projector problems!

In the prints section, winners were Geoff Clinton and Kieron Keller with "Caracal Cat" and "Mr Grumpy" respectively.

In the projected images, the winners were  Chris Williams and Chris  Bennett with "Locked and Loaded" and "Thoughtful" respectively.

Prints Round 3

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The third round of this years print league resulted as follows:

Colour prints was won by Geoff Clinton with "Arctic tern", Chris Bennett was second with "Splashdown" and third pace was Steve Ballard with "Waiting for mum".

In the mono section, Helen Cullens's "On Chesil Beach" ran out winner, with "St Dunstans Church" from Kieron Keller in second and third was taken by Chris Dundon-Smith with "Lioness portrait".

Projected Images Round 3

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A bumper set of images this time round. This week's winning entry was Red sea wreck by Peter Tatton - well done!. Second and Third places went to Gareth Richards with Cathedral of Capitalism and Standing Stones by Allan Parker respectively. Thanks to this week's judge Amanda Wright.

Trophy Evening

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We had one of our regular competition sets last Tuesday 16th January for The Albert Beale Trophy and the Carter Cup. The Albert Beale Trophy was won by Geoff Clinton (again) - he could have left the trophy at home! The topic was coloured reflections as usual and Geoff won with his picture "St Pauls". The Carter Cup was an open Triptych and was won by Helen Cullens with her picture "Tunnel".

The competitions were very well supported with 75 entries and we had our largest audience of the season enjoying a fine evening judged by Chris Sergeant. Well done to Geoff and Helen.

Landscapes and Flowers

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This week we had two more talks from club members.

Colin McInnes took us through some of his own takes on making good landscapes images, with sections on filters, preparation, choosing your viewpoint and the repeated refrain of “use a tripod”. He then closed out with a selection of images based around some favourite locations and discussed “when is a landscape not a landscape?”.

Helen Cullens “gardener first, photographer second” shared some lovely images of flowers, and let us in on some of here own secret techniques. Ever modest, Helen made it all sound very easy, although she did admit to the number of hours it can take to cut around an outline of a flower.

Print Leagues Round 2

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The second round of the Colour and Mono print leagues was held this week and judged by Mark Buckley-Sharp.

In the colour section the weeks winner was another new member Gareth Edmeades with a mganificient cityscape "Over the Thames to St. Paul's". Brian Doble took second with "Homing in on Herb Robert" and third was Geoff Clinton with "Red Hot Tuba Player".

Chris Bennett picked up another win in the Mono section with "Chileshe", the places going to Derek Nash with "Misty Morn" and Helen Cullens with "Remembrance".

Patagonia & Steam trains

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Thanks to Chris Bennett for this weeks update.

Tuesday 21st was like so many games of football: a game of two very contrasting halves.

In the first, we were transported to southern Patagonia and Chile. Richard Craddock talked about the benefit(?) of doing an eight hour trek to get a good view of the Fitzroy mountain range, and showed us some superb landscape images of the mountains and glaciers.

In the second half, we returned firmly to the UK but with many puffs of smoke as Ian Duffield and Peter Duncan talked about their lifelong interest in steam trains. They showed us images from across the whole of the UK of trains, workshops and re-enactors. Moody skies and lovely low evening light featured heavily as well as the trains.

Projected Images – Round 2

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This week's judge Cat Humphries was making her debut at St Albans. The marking was on the generous side, with in a lot of images awarded 20 points, but when the dust had settled, this week's winner was Chris Bennett with her slightly disturbing image “Horror on the undergound”. Chris also secured second place with “Gannet squadron flypast”, and in 3rd place was also a Chris, but this time Chris Dundon-Smith with “Heartbreak”. Congratulations to the 2 Chrises, and also a mention to other 20 point scores for Geoff Clinton, Helen Cullens, Letty Huckerby, Peter Tatton and Chris Williams.

Check out these Results and Images.

Unsurprisingly, Chris Bennett now leads the league after 2 rounds.

How can I improve on this image?

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This week’s session was set up as a “Group critique” (with the emphasis on positive feedback) and discussion about what improvements could be made to some example images and why certain changes would or could improve the images scores in potential competitions.

A number of brave souls offered up a few images for the critique, among them some of our new members for whom this was a bit nerve-wracking but also hopefully a good learning experience.

Taking portraits with minimum equipment with Chris Drury.

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Thanks to Letty for this weeks update..

Chris had brought along a range of backdrops and reflectors. We all took turns “being guinea pig” and posing for each other in small groups. Chris was on hand to help with hints and tips for the best lighting angles for reflectors and flashes.

It was a fun evening with a lot of laughter.

The biggest difficulty seemed to be learning how the complicated flash guns worked!

I found it particularly interesting to discover that gold reflectors don’t flatter older skin and should only be used for young people whereas silver and white reflectors are suitable for all.