18 June 2019

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President:

Dan Crowley

Mobile: M   0457 813 508

dan.crowley@bigpond.com

Vice President:

Sam Anderson

Mobile:

Secretary:

Bruce Williams

Mobile: 0401 065 053

willigofasta@gmail.com

Treasurer:

Barbara Reed

Committee:

Robin Pitcher

Yvonne Young

Philomena Kaarma

Mary Furness

Shoalhaven Photographic Club Inc. Blah Blah Newsletter

Assessment Night: Self Portrait This seemed like a good idea when the committee was putting together the program for this year, but it was maybe harder than it sounds. I was bracing for a host of smartphone style selfies which, fortunately did not eventuate. Instead we got a lovely collection of self portraits of all sorts. From the quiet and contemplative through to action-man style images.

It would be remiss of me not to make special mention of David Land’s attempt, with co-operative partner Pam to recreate a (naked) John Lennon and Yoko Ono love-in style photo. You’ll have to ask David about the technicalities of how he managed to orchestrate the shot but apparently there were about 40 takes before it was finally pronounced good enough. Pam maintained a sense of humour throughout!

Unfortunately our designated judge failed to materialise and , after dismissing the idea of Dan or myself judging, we decided to replicate the end of year process whereby all those members in attendance gets to cast their votes by placing merit or credit tickets against the image on display. 4 credit tickets earned the image a credit and three merit tickets a merit. The system worked extremely well until a clumsy person, who shall remain nameless, kicked one of the stands, sending merit and credit tickets flying in all

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directions. Anyway, from the merit awarded images the POTM was chosen. Clear winner of the POTM was Dan Crowley with his ‘dog imitates man’ self portrait image. Or was that ‘man imitates dog’? 

Here’s what Dan had to say about the image. “This photo was taken in the morning with the sun low casting a shadow through the bottle brush tree onto the side of the shed. Using a 70-200 f/2 telephoto lens at a focal length of 135mm f/10 at 1/40sec and a 10 second timer I pressed the shutter and raced over to the seat and asked Zara to look at our other dog Xena (out of the frame). Zara sat there for a few attempts before getting bored and moving on.

 

“Zara and me: self portrait by Dan Crowley

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What makes this photo a good image from a viewer’s perspective is the colour red attracts the eye. There are red terracotta pots, the red stained timber seat and the red sweatshirt. The eye enters from the bottom left with the orchards, moves across to the dog and up to my face. As both the dog and I are looking out of the frame in the same direction, the eye of the observer looks back out to the left to look at what we are looking at and the pattern is repeated. This triangular path is symmetrical and the eye continues to look back into the picture to find more information. It is a commonly accepted notion that dogs make good subjects as an element in a picture as they appeal to the majority of people and cattle dogs are an iconic breed in Australia.”

I would like to add to Dan’s comments on what I think makes this a good photograph. Firstly, the non-verbal communication is clear. This is a story about both the dog and Dan looking intently at something outside the frame. Compositionally, it creates imaginary lines that lead my eye from Dan’s eye to the dog’s eye and back and then following the direction of their lines of gaze to a meeting point in the lower left corner. The colour of Dan’s red jacket forms a nice contrast with the softer background colours, isolating him more effectively than the telephoto lens or aperture has been able to. A subtle vignette keeps my eye from wandering too far away from the subjects. I like the quality of light whereby the shade cast through the tree provides nice even lighting without harsh shadows that would otherwise appear under the eyebrows or beside the nose yet, at the same time is direct enough to be caught and reflected by the dog’s eye. Finally, I like the square format. It’s refreshingly different.

Last Meeting: Jack Ham from Olympus Australia. (Article by Dan Crowley)Olympus representative Jack Ham was a guest speaker at our June workshop, exhibiting an array of lenses and camera bodies from their new digital series. From the entry level E-M10 Mark lll, E-M5 Mark ll, through to their semi-professional E-M1 Mark ll and professional level E-M1X. Jack had them on display with Zuiko Digital lenses ranging from the wide angle zoom ED 12-200mm F3.5-6.3 to the Pro series ED 12-40mm F2.8 Pro and ED 300 F4.0 IS Pro. The big selling point of the mirrorless camera and 4/3 sensor is the compact lens configuration reducing the package to a very comfortable light weight for travelling. The crop sensor increases the apparent focal length to outreach equivalent full frame sensor cameras with more than half the size and weight. Olympus has taken their image stabilisation to the next level with a built-in 5 axis sensor shift stabilisation that allows handheld photography without a tripod This 7 – 7.5 EV gain provides the stability to hand hold with a shutter speed greater than 2 or 3 seconds letting you leave the tripod in the car or at home and get those great motion style shots from moving water. New software technology has taken the auto focus to a new level using unique Intelligent Subject Detection AF, tracking subjects once locked on until it leaves the frame. An amazing ability to take photographs of lighting with exposures leaving the shutter open for minutes at a time, where the image only adds new light rather than overexposing the original frame.

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After the presentation we moved outside to do some light painting and long exposure to see these feature in action. The Olympus camera handled the exercise without over exposing the image no matter what combination of light intensity was introduced. The night finished with many members being impressed by the Olympus cameras advancement in technology with quality and user friendly functionality.

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Next Assessment Night: Abstract I’m really looking forward to this one and to seeing what everyone has to offer.

Workshops later in the year: We have made a few changes around speaker availability. Please check the web for a complete, up-to-date list of the remaining workshops for this year. Briefly:

July: Dan will do a tethered workshop demonstrating DOF, bokeh etc.August will be a still life workshop, using lightboxes etc to give ideas regarding compositionSeptember Long exposure, maybe at ruined lighthouseOctober workshop to be a slideshow night. Refer to website for a previous presentation on how to make a slideshow.November workshop to be held away from campus for a sunset or similar outdoor shoot. Those interested stay behind for astro work/session (check moon phase etc beforehand

Annual Dinner: A reminder that we will be returning to the Butter Factory restaurant for our annual awards dinner. It will be on Friday 18th October 2019. Save the date!

APS Cup: For what it is worth, our club ranked 40th on the list of 52. Having said that there were not a lot of points separating the scores in the second half of the field. I’m going to stick my neck out here as well and suggest that some of the awarded entries were, in my humble opinion, not deserving of

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awards. Poorly done HDR is truly awful yet seems to be flavour of the month with some judges. I believe we at the SPC can and do regularly produce works as good as many of the awarded images. It once again goes to show that judging is a very subjective situation. You can view the results here:

https://apsauscup.myphotoclub.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/168/2019/06/2019-APS-Australian-Cup-catalogue.pdf

Until next time…