This week we had the first of our three set subject competitions, judged by Jennifer Davidson. There were 60 images submitted altogether, showing members’ different interpretations of the theme of “coast”; including abstract images of sand patterns, seaweed or sea shells, coastal wildlife, portraits of people enjoying seaside activities, and landscape images of the rocky coastline, castles and lighthouses. All the images submitted were well captured and imaginative, and even the images which had distractions or Photoshop problems could be improved by cropping or reprocessing. The top images were:

• Cockenzie Pier (Steven Beard)
• Surge Gully (Mike Clark)
• Saro Light Rocks (Martin Lunden)
• Choppy Waters (Simon Wilkinson)

but the most talked about image was:

• Blustery Winds (Helen Lunden)

because it included a coastal signpost with the word “Grunt”!

The top scorers were:

• 4th place (49 points)
  • Steve Williams
• 3rd = place (50 points)
  • Steven Beard
  • Martin Lunden
• 2nd place (52 points)
  • Simon Wilkinson
• 1st place (53 points)
  • Mike Clark

Mike wins an AO-sized print of an image of his choosing. The scores will be carried forward to the next set subject competition (themed “Dereliction”) on 25th February.

Next week there are two club meetings:

• Tuesday, 19th January: A 4-way inter-club competition is hosted by Midlothian Camera Club and takes place at Dalkeith Arts Centre at 7:15pm. Please see Liz’s post for instructions on how to get there.
• Thursday, 21st January: Quiz Night at the Fisherrow Centre, with questions set by Liz and Jennifer.

Some other announcements:

• The club will be putting together an exhibition of members’ work for the 2016 Musselburgh Riding of the Marches. If you have up to 3 images of Musselburgh or Fisherrow you would like to contribute, please send a digital version of each image (sized to 1400 pixels) to George Todd. Later in the year, we will have a Musselburgh photoshoot as an opportunity to add more images
• Mike,  Liz, Lesley and I will be getting together in a few days to discuss our future plans for the club website. Do you find the website useful? What aspects do you like or not like? How could it be improved? If you have feedback or ideas, please email Mike, Liz, Lesley or me.

Welcome back everyone to our first session in 2016. We started 2016 with a CD of competition images prepared by the Wigan 10 Foto Club. Wigan 10 are a small club who do well in external competitions, and we saw some captioned examples of their competition entries from 2006 onwards. There were common themes: sporting events, landscapes, portraits, and many images of Camargue horses. It was interesting to see how ordinary-looking portraits could be improved with a new background, or how landscapes could be dramatically improved by replacing the sky and adding a moody contrast. It was also interesting to see how the technical quality of digital images has improved over the last 10 years.

Next week (14th January) we have our first set subject competition, on the theme of “COAST”. Everybody should now have sent or given their digital entries to George Todd. Image files should be renamed so the member number and title are part of the filename: for example, 56_HereIsMyTitle.jpg. (Some members had a problem preserving the filename when emailed. That might be caused by having blanks in the file name. It is safer to use “_”.)

Next week is also the closing date for the black and white print competition. Please bring 3 mounted prints.

Diary Dates:

• Wednesday, 13th January: Musselburgh Amateur Musical Association photo op at the Brunton Theatre. This is a dress rehearsal of their 2016 Revue. Please email Jane Renton if you are interested.
• Tuesday, 19th January: 4-Way competition at Midlothian Camera Club. Note that this is on a Tuesday, not Thursday, and is taking place at the Dalkeith Art Centre. Liz has posted some directions.

See you this Thursday.

This week we hosted the first 4-way inter-club competition of the 2015/2016 season. Members from Edinburgh Photographic Society, Haddington Camera Club and Stirling and District Camera Club visited us. 60 digital projected images (15 from each club) were judged by Dougie Allen of Beeslack Camera Club. Whether to crop was the most common comment: Do you need that extra piece of sky? Does that stick on the left hand side add or detract from the image? The artistic merits of each image were compared: Are those gravestones dark enough? Is the subject sufficiently distinguished from the background? Musselburgh’s entries held up well against the competition, but Stirling clinched it with some stunning, top-mark images. Joe’s action shot of the motorbikes was our highest marked image. Well done, Joe. The final result was:

• First place: Stirling and District Camera Club.
• Equal second place: Edinburgh Photographic Society and Musselburgh Camera Club.
• Fourth place: Haddington Camera Club.

Thank you to Jennifer Davidson, George Todd and Liz Sowler for arranging the catering (and to my wife, Elizabeth for baking brownies for the occasion).

This was the last meeting at the Fisherrow Centre until the New Year. Next week, 17th December, we will be meeting at the Ravelston House Hotel in Musselburgh for the MCC Christmas social evening. Dinner is booked for 7:30pm, but we will meet in the hotel bar from 7pm onwards. Here is the location of the hotel on a Google map.

On Tuesday, 29th December, some members will be meeting at 3:30pm at the Scottish Cafe in Princes Street Gardens to photograph the Edinburgh Christmas lights. Details in Liz’s recent post.

Things to think about over the Christmas holidays:

• Please send your digital images for the “COAST” set subject competition to George before 7th January. Jennifer will judge the competition on 14th January 2016.
• The submission for the Black and White print competition is on 14th January 2016.
• There is a WINTER SCENE digital knockout competition on 11th February 2016. A fall of snow, or a frosty morning over Christmas could be a good opportunity to collect some images.

For any members not coming to the social evening, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and I’ll see you at the next meeting at Fisherrow on 7th January 2016. (I am volunteering to make the tea that evening.)

Our meeting on 3rd December didn’t happen as planned. To start with, we learned of a mix-up with the intended venue for the meeting when it was too late to tell everyone in person. Thank you to Liz for sending out the change of venue notices. Apologies to any members who came to Fisherrow and discovered too late that the venue had been changed to Beeslack in Penicuik. You didn’t miss much, though, because the poor weather, and an accident on the A701, conspired to prevent most of us reaching Penicuik. I heard that some members were stuck in the traffic for several hours. I hope you all managed to get home safely. Thank you for trying. A big “thank you” to Anita for warning us of the traffic, and to Gavin for driving Liz, Iwona and me out of the traffic in his 4×4 through the snowy streets of Loanhead. I expect we will all have stories to tell the next time we meet up.

I heard from the Beeslack club secretary that only 8 members made it to Penicuik, but they were treated to an outstanding presentation by Ron McCombe and his wife (who made it from Hawick despite several of the roads through the Borders being closed). Beeslack wished all our members a safe journey home and said they would keep the pile of uneaten sandwiches and cakes for the Audio Visual night on 28th January!

I hope everyone who would like to go to the Christmas social evening on 17th December has signed up with Joe and paid their deposit.

I am assured that this Thursday’s 4-way competition will be at Fisherrow. We are hosting Edinburgh, Haddington and Stirling camera clubs. It starts at the usual time of 7:30pm and will be in the large room at the back of the Fisherrow Centre. Walk down the corridor past the room where we normally meet and turn left. Besides the competition, there will be a chance to share cakes and sandwiches with members of the other clubs. I look forward to seeing you all and exchanging our stories.

This week Steve McGonnell of the Edinburgh Photographic Society judged the MCC Human Portrait print competition. Steve had written a detailed set of notes for each image, and gave each one a comprehensive critique. Distracting backgrounds were a common theme (watch out for background lines which cut through the subject’s head). Plain backgrounds or backgrounds which compliment the subject were preferred. Steve felt that eyes were an important part of a portrait, and the position of the eyes in the frame, the direction of the gaze, the expression in the eyes or the brightness of the eyes were often mentioned. There were some otherwise good images which, unfortunately, suffered from printing faults or had distracting colours. The top image was a beautifully-presented, silky-textured portrait with a great contrasting background called “Jasmine”. The top three images were:

• Jasmine (Charlie Briggs)
• Cheeky Face (Jennifer Davidson)
• Tuyet (“Snow White”) (George Todd)

When the scores were added up, the placings were:

• 1st Place – Charlie Briggs
• 2nd Place – Jennifer Davidson
• 3rd Place – George Todd, Steve Williams, Alan Fitchie, Steven Beard

Thank you to everyone who entered, and well done to Charlie, Jennifer and the other winners.

Our next competition will be the “Coast” set subject competition, which will be judged by Jennifer Davidson on 14th January 2016. The syllabus says that images must be submitted by 10th December, but Jennifer is happy for members to submit their images by 7th January 2016. So we all have the Christmas holidays to capture some more images.

Next week we have a presentation on wildlife photography by Ron McCombe. Ron gave us a presentation last year that was so good that we decided to ask him back. This time his presentation is being held at Beeslack Camera Club in Penicuik. Meet at the Fisherrow Centre at 7pm if you would like a lift. If you have your own transport, go to Beeslack High School, Edinburgh Road, Penicuik, EH26 0QF and aim to be there for 7:30pm. Come along and be inspired.

What a great evening we had yesterday. Lee Howell enthralled us with video-based presentations showing how he creates the most amazing digital art using Photoshop. Art that is sufficiently innovative that Adobe chose his work to advertise their Creative Cloud! Anyone who missed the evening can see his work on his web site (www.leehowellphotography.com). The videos he showed us are available here (and on YouTube). Lee describes himself as an “image maker” as well as a professional photographer. He uses his photography to build a collection of shots with which he assembles his digital images. Lee uses photographs and Photoshop in the same way an artist uses paint and a paint brush. Models are given elaborate hair pieces made from feathers copied from photographs of birds! Stark African scenes are conjured from plain-looking portraits taken in Edinburgh. The most impressive part of Lee’s work for me was seeing how he made a consistent lighting pattern by carefully dodging and burning, paying careful attention to tiny details.

Lee is inspired by the work of Annie Leibovitz, Romain Laurent and Irwin Olaf. He took up digital image creation as a way of recovering “the one that got away”. If you see the perfect shot in front of you but miss it, remember the moment and digitally recreate the elements that made that shot work. Lee revealed some of the Photoshop techniques that he uses in his work:

• Photograph a light subject against a black background. If you add this shot as a Photoshop layer and use “screen” blending mode, the black background disappears and only your subject remains. This technique works especially well for smoke.
• Non destructive dodging and burning: If you add a mid-grey layer above the layer you want to modify and change the blend mode to “soft light”, you can then paint the layer with white to lighten the underlying image or with black to darken the underlying image. (Note: “overlay” and “hard light” blend modes also work but give a harsher effect.)
• To add a shadow, select your subject and convert the selection into a black shape. Add the shape to a new layer and distort into the shape of a shadow. Change the blend mode to “soft light” and the shape makes the image look darker where the shadow falls. Lee blurs the shape and feathers the edge to make the shadow look more realistic. He builds a better effect by adding several shadow layers.
• Add a texture to a surface (such as a model’s skin) by applying a new layer in “overlay” mode. This is how a lot of the feathery head-dresses were created.

Photoshop Workshop?

I will be giving a Photoshop presentation on 31st March 2016. If anyone has been inspired by Lee’s work and would like to learn more about Photoshop earlier than then, I would be happy to start a Photoshop workshop on a mutually convenient evening. If you are interested, please let me know.

Musselburgh Riding of the Marches

The Club has been invited to participate in the exhibition of “Musselburgh Life” at Loretto Primary School as part of the 2016 Musselburgh Riding Of The Marches. We need to collect about 40 images connected with Musselburgh or Fisherrow. The display is scheduled for July 2016, but we need to tell the RoM commitee what we intend to display by the end of January. Please look into your image collections, digital or prints, or perhaps be inspired to take some new photographs in and around Musselburgh or Fisherrow. We may display some pictures of Club members in action !

Diary Dates

• Saturday, 21st November 2016: There will be another “Girls’ Day Out” (open to any member of the club, not just girls) to explore Cockenzie/Port Seton. Tell Liz if you would like to go, or otherwise meet at 10:30am in the lounge of the Wemyss Hotel, opposite the Co-op store in Port Seton.
• Sunday, 22nd November 2015 around 10am. SPF Digital Image Championship at the Stirling Court Hotel, Stirling.

NEXT WEEK

Joe Fowler has the unenviable task of following on from Lee Howell. Joe will show us how to turn dull and unexciting shots into good images. Joe’s presentations are a must-see for newcomers, or anyone wanting to improve their photography skills.

This evening we were entertained by Nadin Dunnigan, who described her journey from from photography student and interested amateur to successful professional, specialising in wedding photography, portraits and advertising shots, while maintaining her interest in photographing landscapes and nature.  Nadin has been inspired by and compared with Michael Kenner, Jill Greenberg and Ray Collins. She prefers to photograph in natural light and uses a technique known as “top shade”, where subjects are photographed just inside a doorway. (I found this video introducing the technique.) She also prefers a shallow depth of field, and normally uses aperture priority mode with the camera set to f2.8 or f4, applying exposure compensation to adjust the exposure. Nadin is an inspiration to those amongst us who don’t like photographing people, and she showed us it is possible to make money from a hobby that you love.

HUMAN PORTRAIT ENTRIES

We have had a disappointing number of entries for the human portrait print competition. Our judge, Steve McGonnell, has said he can accept our prints later than he originally planned, which means we have more time to enter. If you have any portrait prints you would like to enter please let George Todd know, and you can bring them along next week. Any print where the main subject is a person or a group of people is eligible for the human portrait competition. It isn’t restricted to one-on-one portraits.

DIARY DATES

• Sunday, 22nd November 2015 around 10am. SPF Digital Image Championship at the Stirling Court Hotel, Stirling.
• Tuesday, 24th November 2015 at 7pm. Night Photography Workshop at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.
• Thursday, 17th December 2015, MCC Christmas Social Evening at the Ravelston House Hotel in Musselburgh.
  • Please sign the sheet on the noticeboard, and pay Martin the £10 deposit, if you would like to join us.

NEXT WEEK

Next week we have a talk on Photography and Creative Retouching by Lee Howell. (Check his web site for some amazing creations.)