News

Tuesday 16 Jan we will not be a Band Hall but out and about in Oxford taking photos. Meet at 7.30 at Wetherspoons Swan and Castle, Castle Street, Oxford, OX1 1AY. Weather expected to be good but cold. Bring camera and warm clothes.  Next month we have another exhibition at the Westgate Library. More details to follow soon.  Last meeting – Wildlife Photography Part 3 – My month in the Falkland Islands with Tracey Lund 

Last meeting – Helen Stewart in the Artic and France plus show and tell  The Artic – Iceland and Greenland Helen started her presentation with images of Iceland. Iceland has become a very popular destination for photographers and tourists and at times they tend to photograph the same thing. Helen likes to photograph the scene that their backs are facing. Her destination was not Iceland but Greenland and she travelled to the north of Iceland to pick up the ship – the Freya – which would take her on her expedition. This was September and the evening light Helen captured was fantastic. They sailed all night, then all day, then another night before they arrived at a village of colourful houses and, besides getting shots of the village and the area, Helen managed to also do some portraits, though the local people were somewhat reluctant subjects.

Last meeting – Photos, Christmas nibbles and drinks  Many thanks to Helen for organising the evening and providing delicious cakes, savouries, and drinks. We all put up our ‘guess who took that’ photos on the print stand and listed our answers. The winner, who successfully got eight correct choices, was Dave Atkinson. 

Last week’s meeting – In the Footsteps of Shackleton with Eddy Lane.  This was a fascinating talk about Eddy’s trip to Antarctica and Frank Hurley’s trip with Ernest Shackleton a century earlier. This was a brave thing to do. Showing your images and talking about your journey was a tough call alongside Hurley and Shackleton, as both are the stuff of legend.   Eddy flew down to Argentina to a place near the Welsh speaking area. (Legend has it that the word ‘penguin’ is based on Welsh, ‘pen gwyn’ for ‘white head’) He then took a three day sail by ship to the Falkland Islands. On the way he caught photos of Wandering Albatrosses which, once fledged, spend eight years at sea before returning to the place of their birth to breed. Getting fresh drinking water is a challenge for sea birds. Some sea birds have their own a desalination system. They have a “gland (which) secretes (the) highly concentrated brine stored near the nostrils above the beak. The bird then “sneezes” the brine out.” 

Last week’s meeting – Turning Photos into Books with Michele Peters and A look at Project work and a look at AI with Phil Joyce. Michele has produced some 45 photo books. She has produced for various purposes; as a souvenir, a present, a thank you, but primarily she doesn’t want her photos to sit on her computer gathering digital dust, she wants to share them with others. In the past Michele had list of steps she would diligently follow to produce the photobook:

Last week’s meeting – Living and working as a professional photographer in Namibia with Scott Hurd  Scott was ‘zooming-in’ from his adopted home in Namibia and chatted about his time in and around Oxford many years ago before he started his talk. He explained Namibia was a highly unequal country with about one million people living in what he called ‘informal settlements’, that’s about 40 percent of the population. It the third lowest densely populated country in the world. He saw education as key to giving people choices in their lives and said many of the poorest children go to school because they get fed and had touching photos of the life of a young Namibian boy from an ‘informal settlement’ getting ready to go to school.

Last week’s meeting – Managing your photographs with Brian Worsley   Brian told us that managing your photographs is extremely important in the digital age given the number of images people take and store on their computer hard drives, external drives, usb sticks, cloud storage etc. Searching years of stored photographs of the one that you want can be extremely lengthy or nigh on impossible if you not organise your images with a way to search them.

Last week’s meeting – Digital Projected Image Competition no. 2 The results of Digital Projected Image Competition no. 2 were: First Pete Warrington Brief Encounter, Berkshire Downs

Last week’s meeting – GULAG: a journey into the darkness of Stalin’s Siberian prison with Barry Lewis  Barry’s talk was very well received scoring on average a ‘9’ from members. It was also a very well attended evening with 32 people attending and which 21 were members.

Last week’s meeting – “The Art and Science of Studio Techniques” with Tony McMaster.   Tony came with some impressive kit to aid his presentation.  Instead of using the projector he set up two monitors on stands so that we could see what he shot on his camera. His camera was tethered to his laptop and via Capture One software and the images were displayed on the monitors.