Category Archives: About the club

Welcome to the 2025-2026 season of Musselburgh Camera Club

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I would like to welcome everyone who came to our opening night on 4th September 2025, especially the new members. If you entered your email address on the club home page you should receive these blog entries that describe our meetings. You can also follow group activities by joining our member-only Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/25703565185901411. Ask our web master, Elaine Gilroy, for an invitation.

You will find our 2025-2026 programme on the club website: https://musselburghcameraclub.org.uk/programme-2025-2026/. There are also monthly outings and photoshoots which are listed on our activities page: https://musselburghcameraclub.org.uk/club-activities-2025-2026/, but you’ll find the most up to date information and chat about each activity on our Facebook pages.

The club web site contains a collection of tutorials on photography that our chair has added over the years:
https://musselburghcameraclub.org.uk/introduction-to-photography-presentations/

A list of the events coming up in the next few weeks has already been posted. Click this link to read that post: https://musselburghcameraclub.org.uk/2025/08/26/events-coming-up-in-the-next-few-weeks/

This coming Thursday, 11th September, we have our Creative Lighting Workshop. Please bring your camera and (if you have one) a flashgun. We’ll start the evening by showing a selection of different lighting equipment. If you have anything unusual you would like to show, please bring it with you. We will have 3 different portrait lighting setups that you can try for yourself. On this occasion we’ll be concentrating on taking portraits, so please bring along any costumes and props you think would look good.

Information on how to enter the club competitions can be found here (or you can just ask George Todd, our competition secretary). Competition images are normally emailed to George at georgetodd1957@me.com:

Competition Information
An introduction to the club competitions

Welcome again to the club. A year of exciting photographic activities lies ahead of us.

2025 Opening Night Coming Up

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The summer has flown by and our new season is about to start! Come along to our opening night at 7pm on Thursday, 4th September 2025 in room G3 of the Fisherrow Centre in Musselburgh to meet club members and find out about the club. You can check out our packed 2025/26 programme here:

Programme 2025 – 2026

After the opening night we begin the season with a creative lighting workshop and then welcome our first speaker, Graeme Barclay, to tell us about street photography, etc… The club also arranges monthly activities throughout the year, which you can find listed here:

CLUB ACTIVITIES 2025-2026

Our next activity is a visit to Aberlady on Saturday 13th September 2025. A perfect occasion for beginners to learn from our more experienced members. I look forward to seeing you all on Thursday, 4th September.

24 April 2025 (AGM and Presentation of Trophies)

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The 2024/25 Musselburgh Camera Club season ended on 24th April 2025 with the AGM and the presentation of trophies. Although the AGM is our last meeting at the Fisherrow centre this season, we are planning a series of activities through the year, so watch out for notifications or check our latest activities page. The club has a private Facebook page which members can join to be notified about events and to chat during the summer. Click the link below to chat or request to join (you’ll need a Facebook account):

https://m.facebook.com/groups/25703565185901411

Members had an opportunity during the evening to suggest and vote for the topics for next year’s set subject competitions. The top results were:

  1. Weather
  2. Emotion
  3. Comedy

which become the themes for set subjects 1, 2 and 3.

The AGM finished with a presentation of trophies and medals and with a selection of snacks and refreshments provided by Jennifer Davidson and Liz Sowler, who once again received the club’s “Golden Teapot” award. The full list of trophy and medal winners can be found on the following page. Well done to all of this year’s winners.

Trophy Winners – 2024/2025

Although the 2024/25 season has come to an end, the club’s exhibition will be touring local libraries during the summer. Here is the current timetable and list of volunteers. Further exhibitions may be added between 5th July and 2nd August.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered. Our first meeting of the 2024/25 season will be on Thursday, 4th September 2025. But in the meantime, I look forward to seeing you at our summer photoshoots.

13 February 2025 (Camera Settings Evening)

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This week we had an evening devoted to a discussion on camera settings. Steven began the evening with a general presentation on camera settings. The notes from the presentation can be downloaded from the following page:

Introduction to Camera Settings

Steven was intending to demonstrate the effect of the different settings live, but unfortunately the HDMI link from his camera to the club projector didn’t work. 😦 But members experimented with different exposure modes by photographing light and dark objects against a black or white background. The ability to focus on an erratic object was testing using a chaotic pendulum, and the flash modes were compared by photographing a cat toy being waved around in the air. There wasn’t enough time to cover all the possibilities, but if you are interested in learning more about autofocus modes, here is on online tutorial:

https://www.naturettl.com/understanding-autofocus-points-and-modes/

Here are a couple of tutorials explaining what you can do with the “slow sync” flash modes that we tried during the evening:

https://www.iphotography.com/blog/slow-sync-flash-photography/

https://www.theschoolofphotography.com/tutorials/slow-sync-flash

Derek finished the evening by giving a demonstration on depth of field. A collection of little men were placed at different distances from a background, and members tried photographing them with different aperture settings.

  • Next week Joe Gilhooley will be giving us a talk entitled “If I Can Do It, You Can Do It“. You can find some of Joe’s work on his web site:

http://www.joegilhooley.co.uk/index.html

See you there.

The first MCC meeting of the New Year starts on 9th January

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Happy New Year! Our meetings will resume at 7pm this Thursday, 9th January in our usual room G3 at the Fisherrow Centre.  David Ferguson, president of Falkirk Camera Club, will be judging our Human Portrait print competition.

It is also time to submit entries for the first of our three set subject competitions. Please send your 3 JPEG images on the subject of “Buildings” to George Todd (georgetodd1957@me.com). Here are some events that may be on interest:

See you this Thursday.

05 September 2024 (Opening Night)

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The 2024-2025 season is now well underway. I would like to welcome all the potential new members who came along to try us out. If you entered your email address on the club home page you should receive these blog entries that describe our meetings. You can also follow group activities by joining our member-only Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/25703565185901411. Ask Elaine Gilroy or Charlie Baird for an invitation.

You will find our 2024-2025 programme of activities on the club website:
https://musselburghcameraclub.org.uk/programme-2024-2025/ There will also be regular outings and photoshoots not mentioned in that programme, so keep watching our Facebook group. Ed, the club secretary will also notify members of events by email, in case you don’t use Facebook.

The club web site contains a collection of tutorials on photography that our chair has added over the years:
https://musselburghcameraclub.org.uk/introduction-to-photography-presentations/

Here is a list of interesting events that could present photographic opportunities in the next few weeks:

Information on how to enter the club competitions can be found here (or you can just ask George Todd, our competition secretary). Competition images are normally emailed to George at georgetodd1957@me.com:

Competition Information
An introduction to the club competitions

I look forward to another year of exciting photographic activities.

25 April 2024 (AGM and Presentation of Trophies)

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The 2023/24 Musselburgh Camera Club season ended on 25th April 2024 with the AGM and the presentation of trophies. We discussed the upcoming programme for 2024-25, which John West has packed with more speakers and special events. We are planning a series of monthly photoshoots through the year, so watch out for notifications or check our activities page. The club now has a private Facebook page which members can join to be notified about events and to chat during the summer while we are not meeting at Fisherrow. Click the link below to request to join (you’ll need a Facebook account):

https://m.facebook.com/groups/25703565185901411

Members had an opportunity during the evening to suggest and vote for the topics for next year’s set subject competitions. The top results were:

  1. Buildings
  2. Distorted
  3. Cycling

which become the themes for set subjects 1, 2 and 3. We decided that the knockout will be open to all images next year.

The AGM finished with a presentation of trophies and medals and with a selection of snacks and refreshments provided by Jennifer Davidson and Liz Sowler, who received the club’s “Golden Teapot” award. The full list of trophy and medal winners can be found on the following page:

Trophy Winners – 2023/2024

Although the 2023/24 season has come to an end, the club’s exhibition will be touring local libraries during the summer. This year we also have an exhibition at Cockenzie House. Here is the timetable and list of volunteers.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered. Our first meeting of the 2023/24 season will be on Thursday, 5th September 2024. But in the meantime I hope to see you at some of our summer photoshoots.

All the best,

Steven Beard

Digital Images Competition and Aurora

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A reminder that this coming Thursday is the deadline for entering the Digital Projected Images competition. This is an open competition where you can enter colour images of any subject. To enter the competition please email your 3 JPEG images to our competition secretary, George Todd (georgetodd1957@me.com). If you can’t email your images you can give them to George this Thursday.

Images need to be sized to fit into a 1600×1200 pixel rectangle, as shown below. A 4:3 landscape image can be resized to 1600×1200, but a 4:3 portrait image needs to be resized to 900 x 1200.

If you are a beginner and don’t know how to resize your images, send them anyway. George is always happy to help beginners to resize their images. Best of luck. The competition will be judged by Eddie Telford on 12th October 2023.

And now the second part of the news. I am getting a red alert for an aurora this evening, and the sky is clear! If you have the time, and are able to find a place with a good view of the northern sky, you could get some great shots this evening.

https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/

See you this Thursday, when Neil Scott will give us his talk on “Minimalism My Way”.

07 September 2023 (Opening Night)

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Welcome to the 2023-2024 Season!

It was lovely to see so many familiar faces back at the club after our summer break, and even better to see so many potential new members joining us. The club was featured on Radio Saltire on 26th July, and there was an extra exhibition of our work at the radio station during that week. A recording of the show may be posted online, so check out their web pages:

https://www.radiosaltire.com/

https://www.facebook.com/RadioSaltire/

This year we will be concentrating on face to face meetings and hoping to bring back more of the informal chat that we lost during Covid. We will still use Zoom occasionally to connect with other clubs and our friends overseas. We began the meeting with a few announcements:

The following events provide some opportunities for sports photography over the next few weeks:

You can find a summary of Musselburgh Camera Club’s 2023-2024 programme here on the web site:

Programme 2023 – 2024
The 2023-2024 club programme

Information on how to enter the club competitions can be found here (or you can just ask George, our competition secretary):

Competition Information
An introduction to the club competitions

Joe Fowler gave us an introduction to the national competitions which are open to all club members. He showed us a selection of his entries and described his experiences. He emphasised that most photographers who enter these competitions don’t win anything. But everyone who enters a competition gets feedback which helps them improve. Don’t be put off by one judge’s comments, because we all have different tastes, and don’t try to bend your style to match what you think the judges will want. Your own style will develop as you learn.

We finished the evening with a chat over tea and biscuits. Next week there will be a digital image feedback session. Either bring along 2 JPEG images, or email your images to George at georgetodd1957@me.com.

27 April 2023 (AGM and Presentation of Trophies)

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The 2022/23 Musselburgh Camera Club season ended on 27th April 2023 with the AGM and the presentation of trophies. The AGM was organised as a hybrid meeting, with most members attending at Fisherrow but a small number joining by Zoom. Next year we plan to go back to face to face meetings as the norm and restore our regular tea and coffee breaks, but we’ll use Zoom as an occasional tool for reaching out to more distant speakers and clubs.

Members had an opportunity during the evening to suggest and vote for the topics for next year’s set subject competitions. The top results were:

  1. Macro
  2. Contrasting Textures
  3. Flowers
  4. Water

The first 3 topics become set subjects A, B and C and the last topic will become the subject of our digital knockout competition. For beginners who may be reading, “Macro” is a close-up photograph of something small, as defined in this article: Macro photography definition. It’s an opportunity to look at the small things around you. You can use any of the special equipment described in the article (macro lens, reversed lens, extension tubes, close-up lens) to take macro photographs, but here are a few tricks you can try if you don’t have such equipment:

  • Use a telephoto lens at its minimum focus distance. Some lenses can take surprising good macro photographs even when they are not labelled as “macro”. You can use a larger subject to disguise the fact that you are not that close.
  • Take a photograph through a magnifying glass. A close-up lens is merely a magnifying glass that clips onto the front of you camera.
  • Use your mobile phone. Mobile phones can take close up photos because their cameras are small.

The AGM finished with a presentation of trophies and medals and with a delicious selection of snacks and refreshments provided by Jennifer Davidson, Liz Sowler and George Smith, who also received the club’s “Golden Teapot” award. The full list of trophy and medal winners can be found on the following page:

Trophy Winners – 2022/2023

Although the AGM brings the formal 2022/23 season to an end, there will be informal meetings by Zoom every Thursday evening throughout the summer. We also have an exhibition in The Wee Hub at Ocean Terminal and at various libraries. The timetable can be found at the following page:

2023 Library Exhibitions

Our first meeting of the 2023/24 season will be on Thursday, 7th September 2023. We have another programme packed with speakers, competitions and special events to look forward to. In the meantime, best of luck and I hope you have a summer packed with fun photography.

See you in September if not before. All the best,

Steven Beard