This week we had the second part of the editing workshop. Members brought their laptops and helped each other to edit their images. John Fowler began by explaining that a good image is created by the photographer, not by the camera. You need to capture a good image before editing begins. John compared two images taken at Seacliff beach on the same day.

• The first image showed an expanse of colourful sandy beach, with the sea and Bass Rock in the distance, a few rocks and waves in the distance, a nice sky, and a few people dotted around the beach. It’s the kind of shot you would take when you first arrive, notice the lovely view, and snap it with your camera. But the camera doesn’t fully capture all the lovely things you noticed with your eyes. The composition is boring.
• The second image showed what happened when John got closer to the rocks and waves. The rocks now fill the frame, with waves crashing over them. John positioned himself so that Bass Rock could be seen in the distance between the crashing waves, creating a much more dramatic composition. No amount of editing could have converted the first image into the second, although editing could now be used to enhance the detail in the waves and improve the impact of the image even further.

Derek showed us how he resizes images for printing and DPI competitions. There is some guidance on resizing, printing and mounting on the club web site:

• Competition Information
• How To Re-size Your Images
• Mounting Your Images

Derek showed us a variation where he creates a white canvas in Photoshop the same size as the printer paper, which allows images to be placed anywhere on the paper and gives you control over the exact size of the margin (rather than relying on the printer dialog). This technique is useful when creating images for the club printer.

Derek also showed how images provided by Jim and Janet could be improved by removing distractions, cropping and making fine adjustments by dodging and burning. Thank you, Derek, for a very useful and entertaining evening.

• After all this talk about resizing for competitions, next week is the submission deadline for our first competition of the year: the Digital Projected Images competition. Please email your 3 JPEG images (sized to fit into 1600×1200 pixels) to our competition secretary, George Todd. You can find George’s email address on your membership programme.
• There has been a change to the programme: Derek will not be able to make it to the “Film Noir” portrait workshop originally scheduled on 24th September and, since Derek is our portrait wizard, we’ll instead use this evening to practice our high contrast techniques. The “Film Noir” workshop has been rescheduled to 22nd October.
• Next week, on 17th September, Molly Hollman will be talking to us about “Creative Flower and Plant Photography”. Click on Molly’s name to check out her web site and see some examples of her work. However, since Molly lives 450 miles away in East Kent, she won’t be coming to Musselburgh! She will be chatting with us by Zoom instead. You can still join us in room G3 at the Fisherrow Centre, but I’ll circulate a link to all paid up members so you have the choice of connecting from home. The meeting starts at 7pm as usual. I look forward to seeing how she creates those fabulous flower images.

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