The meeting began with Joe reminding members about the SPF Digital Competition meeting at Stirling University Campus on Sunday 22nd November . It is a good day out and provides the opportunity to see the best of images from other Scottish Clubs.  Musselburgh Camera  Club has not entered this year. We are building up a large collection of images to use for future inter-club competitions. There is no need to wait to enter a club competition. If your think you have some good images send them anytime to Joe ( Vice Chairman)  or George Todd ( Competition Secretary ).

The meeting on 5th November will have Nadine Dunnigan as speaker –  a change to the published Syllabus. She will describe her experiences during her transformation from an amateur photographer to a professional –  earning money for her photographic activities !

The main part of the meeting consisted of the judging of the MCC Club Print Competition by Charlie Summers of Midlothian Camera Club. 58 images were entered covering  a wide variety of subjects. Charlie commented that most of the prints were of a very high technical standard. He emphasised the importance of presentation with prints. Apart from detailed comments on the individual images, general comments were that a number of  images were too tight within the frame. Also, some had wide white borders which distracted attention from the image itself. Some prints had got damaged by being stuck together during transport to judging, due to excess of glue. It is very important to make sure that every print is clean and non sticky.

The winner was a beautiful  shot of a pair of otters at Five Sisters Zoo in West Lothian.

This evening we welcomed my colleague Jason Cowan from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, who entertained us with not one but three separate talks. Jason first took us through the history of photography at the observatory, delving into the image archive to show us photographs taken by Charles Piazzi Smyth during his pyramid measuring expeditions, historical images showing the observatory site on Blackford Hill just after it was founded in 1894, and showing how the site developed in the early 20th century. He then told us about the history of the photographic laboratories at the observatory from the 1970s to the 1990s. Back then the laboratories managed and copied the glass photographic plates recorded by wide angle telescopes, such as the UK Schmidt Telescope. The laboratories were rendered obsolete by the coming of the digital age. Jason’s final presentation showed us the tools and facilities he uses to manage the observatory’s collection of digital media. One such tool is ResourceSpace, which is an open source package that can be downloaded for free and can be used to manage metadata, identify image collections, manage access and sharing of those images and make them available on a shared server. Jason gave us some useful advice for safeguarding a valuable collection of images. 3-2-1 Backups: Make 3 copies of all of your images, use 2 different devices and store one copy at a different location. If you were to lose your computer today, how many of your  images would you lose?

Jason gave us the following useful image management web sites on his last slide:

• http://www.dpbestflow.org/
• http://www.photometadata.org/
• http://www.resourcespace.org/
• http://thedambook.com/
• http://www.xnview.com/en/

SYLLABUS CHANGES

• The talk FROM AMATEUR TO PRO  by Nadia Dunnigan has moved from Oct 22 to Nov 05.
• On Oct 22 we have a new inter-club competition between Musselburgh Camera Club and Mölnlycke Fotoklubb in Sweden. Mölnlycke Fotoklubb will send 20 digital images to be marked and critiqued by us. In return, we will send them 20 of our images and receive their comments later in the year (date to be announced).

NEW DIARY DATES

• Saturday, 19th September 2015: The Scottish Half Marathon finishes in Musselburgh.
• Monday, 28th September 2015: A “Supermoon Lunar Eclipse” will be visible from the UK.

NEXT WEEK

Next week our speaker is Billy Currie, a landscape photographer who offers courses and workshops. His web site contains some stunning landscape images. In his talk “IS GETTING IT RIGHT ENOUGH?” next week, perhaps he will show us how he creates these images.

Tonight we had a recorded lecture showing the results from the 2013 Scottish Photographic Federation portfolio projected digital images competition. Lots of images of birds (with and without a stick) and squirrels, insects, minimalist beach scenes (sticks without the birds), portraits, striking landscapes and inspired Photoshop creations. Plenty of images to inspire new ideas.

There is one week left until the closing date for the Digital Images competition. Please send your 3 images to George Todd (either by email during the week, or next Thursday on a CD or data stick). Please resize your images to 1400 pixels on the longest side, save them as a JPEG file and rename the file with your member number and title (such as “56_Fisherrow_Room_Four.jpg”). Best of luck.

More diary dates

• Friday, 11th September: Mike Clark is suggesting a visit to Blair Drummond Safari park, since the weather forecast looks good for tomorrow. Please email Mike if you would like to go. Those members who have tickets and can’t go tomorrow could perhaps club together and choose another day?
• Sunday, 13th September: The Riding of the Marches takes place in Edinburgh.

Next week my colleague, Jason Cowan, the last remaining professional photographer at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, will tell us about his work. He started working in the photographic laboratories, copying and processing the plates taken by overseas telescopes and stored in a plate library. Now, in the digital age, Jason is responsible for managing the observatory’s image collection. He will give us hints and tips on how we can manage and safeguard our own personal collections.

See you next week,

Steven.