We were delighted to welcome members of Mölnlycke Fotoclubb, Gothenburg to our very first international members evening. Connecting virtually by Zoom means we can meet up with other club members anywhere in the world. Our host for the evening was Jan Arell, the chair of Mölnlycke Fotoclubb.

Jan introduced us to a recent trip the club had made to Ramsvik, a small photogenic island on the west coast of Sweden about 150 km north of Gothenburg. The island has quite a stark appearance, with hard granite rocks making interesting shapes.  A blue sea, bright green algae and green lichen scattered amongst the rocks adds to the interest.  Jan showed us the pictures their members had taken during the visit. There were images of the sea, sky and rocks taken from different viewpoints. There was even a great shot of a curious polecat. The weirdly-shaped holes carved into the rocks by the sea gave an opportunity for numerous abstract compositions. The rocky textures also produced impressive black and white images, and some of the rocks were so shiny they looked almost metallic. There were a few houses on the island which featured in many of the photographs and helped to add more shapes and colours. There were also portraits showing common activities on the island, such as hiking, mountain biking and, of course, photography. The show finished with a view of the setting sun next to a wine glass.

Musselburgh camera club members returned the favour by showing Mölnlycke Fotoclubb members some of the pictures they have taken during last year’s visit to Gothenburg. We also showed them images of Seacliff Beach,  the Pentland Hills,  Rosslyn Chapel,  leaping salmon in Loch Achray,  The Kelpies,  the Magdalene Chapel in Edinburgh and Musselburgh to whet their appetite for a visit to Scotland once the travel and social restrictions are lifted. We finished the evening with a lovely chat. It was a pity we couldn’t share some tea and biscuits.

We will have another opportunity to meeting up with Mölnlycke Fotoclubb on 11th March when we have our Swedish Inter-club Competition.

On 1st October we had our first virtual photo advice evening. Normally we would sit around tables in the Fisherrow Centre and discuss the prints brought by members, passing the prints from table to table, and finish the evening with a chat over tea and biscuits. This year we discussed digital versions of our images by Zoom teleconference. Each member presented 3 images for comments and advice. Unlike the photoshoot round-up last week, this time we spent much longer on each image discussing its merits and suggesting improvements. Some of the lessons learned were:

• Macro photography is difficult and focusing is critical. If you are close to your subject even small camera movements can shift the focus away from your subject. Flowers blowing in the wind can drift in and out of focus as they move, and you if you choose a smaller aperture to give a greater DOF the wind can cause motion blur. Macro photography is best done using a tripod in a sheltered spot. Hand-held macro shots let you be more creative, but you should allow for a lot more rejected shots.
• A focus stack is difficult to get right, but small focus increments work best, and the shots are best made using a tripod. Try taking a test shot at a very small aperture (such as f/22-f/32) to see how your subject looks with a large DOF. The focus stack will have worked if you can create a sharper shot than the one taken at the very small aperture. (Shots at very small apertures are blurred by diffraction.)
• A landscape image works best when there is something interesting in the foreground, such as a house, a river or a path which leads the eye to the interesting scenery in the background. It is well worth collecting photographs of interesting skies, even if the foreground is boring. You can replace a boring sky in a landscape shot with an interesting one from your collection.
• Nature and wildlife images work best when there is a narrow DOF and no distracting objects in the background. Ideally, distractions should be avoided by careful composition in camera but we don’t always notice everything at the time. Distractions can be cropped out or darkened or (for nature photography only) removed by cloning. These days, the most successful nature and wildlife shots are ones that capture interesting or unusual behaviour.
• Shots made at unusual angles can work really well. Try getting down on the ground and photographing your flowers from their level, or capturing a crabs-eye view of the shells on a beach.

Thank you to everybody who brought and shared their images. There were some really cracking flower and nature shots we may well see again in future competitions.

• Next week we have our first competition of the year. Dougie Allan will judge our Digital Projected Images Competition. Our first virtual competition. I look forward to seeing you then.

On 24th September club members met to discuss their experiences visiting the The Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh.  Members had visited the gardens on different days and at different times, and had photographed the plants and flowers under different lighting conditions. We took turns to show the images we had captured during our visit. We quickly discovered the following subjects had attracted attention and been independently photographed by members in different ways:

• The young moorhen in the pond.
• The plants growing in the rock garden.
• An inquisitive squirrel.

There were lots of photographs of flowers and wildlife, photographs showing the texture of tree bark and photographs showing the natural patterns made by leaves and foliage.  There were also some photographs of the patterns created by the flotsam in the pond, and a lovely photograph of the Chinese pavilion.

This was our first practice at screen sharing in Zoom and it worked.

This week we had the pleasure of welcoming Scottish landscape photographer Dougie Cunningham, author of the popular guidebook “Photographing Scotland“. Dougie began by telling us how he started in photography, which grew out of his love for the outdoors and the satisfaction of capturing those defining moments in life. He shot wedding photographs for friends and worked on photo-shoots for outdoor clothing manufacturers. His full biography can be found on his website, “leading lines”:

https://www.leadinglines.net/bio

Dougie then described how his love for landscape photography turned into a contract to write a guidebook for photographers wanting to capture the best Scotland had to offer.  The book was divided into chapters covering different parts of Scotland. Compiling each chapter became an adventure in itself. Some chapters were completed quickly and some chapters needed many repeated visits to the same location until the weather finally allowed Dougie to capture the shots he wanted. Dougie toured Scotland in a small camper van, which allowed him to sleep in remote locations and wait for the sunrise.  A typical pattern was to capture sunrise and sunset, then drive to the next location and wait for the next sunrise. He would often climb to the top of a mountain and sleep in a tent at the top, hoping to capture a striking sunrise shot from the summit, only to wake in the morning after an uncomfortable night to the sound of horizontal rain lashing against the side of his tent. But Dougie learned during the project to make use of every opportunity; not to let tiredness put you off when the light is right, and not to let waking up to bad weather put you off. On some occasions the weather had cleared enough by the time Dougie set up his equipment to capture an atmospheric post-storm mountain sunrise. He found the project itself gave him the inspiration to keep going. In landscape photography it helps to give yourself a goal.  Members were transfixed for an hour and a half, when Dougie showed one spectacular Scottish landscape image after another.  Some of these images can be seen in Dougie’s flickr collection:

https://www.flickr.com/people/oldnotbold/

Dougie described some of his photography techniques. He tries to capture scenery as you would find it, so his photographs are not digitally manipulated (apart from graduated filters and tone corrections). If a lamp post happens to be in an inconvenient place, so be it. But this rule helps Dougie think about the composition of his images, capturing iconic landmarks from unusual angles to avoid the distractions. Dougie encouraged photographers to find new ways of capturing popular scenes. It is understandable for a someone visiting a place for their one and only time to play safe and capture the usual postcard shot, but if you have a chance to visit more than once it pays to experiment and find a new view unique to yourself.  Dougie’s book can be found in most bookshops, such as those below:

Amazon;  W H Smith; Waterstones;  Blackwells

Now we just need to save up and buy that camper van…