Newsletter December 2016

Editor: Bob Breach

The President’s Column

As we approach our Christmas Break it’s a good time to reflect on 2016 and what we have all achieved over the past year. More

importantly it’s a time to make those all important resolutions for self improvement

for the new year, with which I wish you good luck. I have definitely not taken enough photos in 2016 for my liking, so

there’s my resolution straight away.

The Society has had a very strong start to the 2016/17 season. We currently have just over 50 members and a high average turnout at meetings. It has also been a bumper year for internal

competition entries which is excellent news. We have had an increase in entries from all members including a lot of our new

members from this year. This has left the committee with a dilemma for next year’s aggregate competitions though, so please read the article on the proposed changes for the 2017/18 season

and let Bob Bracher know your thoughts.

We have had a well curated first half of the season starting all the way back in September with our very own Anne Sutcliffe showing some of her more recent images. Other notable evenings have

been Nettie Edwards and her mobile photography, and two great members practical evenings with a studio session and a flash

workshop. There are plenty of great evenings lined up for the second half of the season as well to look forwards to.

And on top of all this we also have our exceptional Solihull Open Exhibition coming up in the new year. I hope as many of you as

possible have entered your own photographs and I look forward to the best of Solihull awards.

Finally a very merry Christmas and a happy new year from myself and your committee. Enjoy yourself during the festive period, but

most importantly take plenty of photographs.

We will see you again for the first evening of 2017 on the 10th January.

James Glenn President

Inside this issue:

Perfectly timed animal pictures by Bob Breach

2

Entries for Midphot 2017 by Tony Moir

3

Competition success for Jo Monro

4

Aggregate competition format by Bob Bracher

4

A snippet from the Society Archives by John Innes

5

Uploading AV shows on the web by Bob Breach

5

Our new membership system by Jim Hiscox

6

Solihull Open Exhibition of Photography by Jim Hiscox

7

Editor - Bob Breach

breaches@btinternet.com

A very happy

Christmas to

all members.

May all your

New Year

images be

good ones.

The first meeting in 2017 is on 10 January when we welcome back

the popular David

Tideswell talking “All about Robins”.

Also remember that this

is the handing in date for the 3rd aggregate

competition so make

sure your images are ready.

Perfectly Timed Animal Photos by Bob Breach

Page 2 Newsletter - December 2016

I came across a website which showcases what is claimed to be the best 50 perfectly

timed animal shots. I have selected a few to amaze or amuse you and if you want to

see all 50 then visit:

http://www.boredpanda.com/perfectly-timed-funny-animal-pictures/

The introduction says:

Animal photography requires a great deal of time, patience, and some say luck… and this is where the debate starts. What part does luck play in photography? We

rounded up 50 examples of perfectly timed animal photos which seem like pure luck. Most of these shots are so incredible that if you blinked you would have missed it! But

as a popular saying goes:

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

What about you? What part does luck play in your photography?

Photo by David Maitland

Photo by Zoltan Gyori Photo by Marco Sartori

Page 3

Entries for Midphot 2017 competition by Tony Moir

Newsletter - December 2016

Photo by José Luis Rodríguez

Midphot is a competition organised by Midland Counties Photographic Federation (MCPF), whose current chairman is our own Mike Chapman. The competition includes a number of classes and awards, for example, general prints and projected images, nature prints and projected images. For a full list of the classes and awards, as well as rules relating to the different classes, please view the Midphot Rules on the MCPF website:

http://www.mcpf.co.uk/midphotrules2017.pdf

If you are interested in submitting entries to Midphot 2017, please download and complete

entry forms, as described in the rules. The official entry forms must be completed and sent to

MCPF through the Society, so please ensure that your individual forms are passed to me by

Tuesday 24 January 2017, together with prints or CDs containing DPIs.

Photo by Hakan Pekbelgin

Note from the editor

One of the benefits of an electronic news-letter is that readers can quickly access related websites through what is called an

HTML link. If you are not familiar with these you will find them in this edition as web addresses which are underlined and

in blue. If you are reading this on your computer and wish to visit the webpage simply:

Hover the mouse over the link

The mouse pointer should change to a

hand

Click and you should find the web

page appear by magic in your browser

Note that for security your computer

may ask you to confirm ok

Page 4

We are very keen to encourage members to enter competitions and are pleased that this

season many newer members have taken up the challenge. However, at the same time the Committee has been concerned that this has meant that the judge can have a very

large number of entries to consider, particularly for the quarterly aggregate competition.

This in turn does not give enough time for the judge to fully comment on each image.

The quarterly aggregate competition is one that has been in place for some years and is designed to assess the consistency of author’s work over a number of both print and DPI images and with different judges. To maintain this objective but limit the number of

entries to manageable levels, the committee is therefore considering a change to the

format. The two options are:

Keep the existing 4 competition print/DPI format but limit entries to no more than

4 entries per author (2 print and 2 DPI). The mono image requirement would go. (This maintains the idea of fully assessing members consistency of work but

reduces the overall number of images to be judged)

Split the competition into separate print and DPI aggregate competitions with up to 3 or 4 entries per author for each of two rounds

(This is easier to administer but somewhat reduces the assessment of consistency)

The committee will make the final decision but would welcome comments from members beforehand. If you have any preference for the options above could you please e-mail

Bob Bracher - Internal Competitions Secretary (rpbracher@yahoo.co.uk ) before the end

of January. We will let you all know the final outcome.

Aggregate competition format 2017/18 by Bob Bracher

Newsletter - December 2016

Congratulations to Jo for winning the 'GPU

Gold Medal Best Fungi' in the recent Wrekin Salon - Nature section. The Awards

and Presentation Ceremony is being held at

The Belfry Theatre Arts Complex in January.

The image was taken with a Nikon D7000 with a 100mm Macro lens. Three separate exposures were taken, focusing in turn on

each Ink Cap. The three images were then focus stacked in Photoshop to produce the

final image so that all three fungi were

sharp!

Competition success for Jo Monro

Stop Press : Congratulations also to Jan lee and Bob Bracher for each getting two images

accepted in the RPS Digital Imaging Group annual competition

Page 5

The Society keeps an archive of old documents and other material of historic

interest, going back to its formation in 1936. It is interesting to browse through these, particularly some of the old minute books which are very

detailed. I recently found this interesting extract from 1945, only a month after VE Day when rationing of many foods was the norm. Major Parr was an

active member of the club.

Report of Half Day Outing on Saturday, June 9th 1945

The party, consisting of about twenty members and their visitors, travelled to Knowle,

either by the 3.23 pm bus or by car and had tea at the Stopped Clock Cafe at 4.00pm at a charge of 1/6 per head. After tea they walked or drove to the Dial House, Heronfield, where they were received by Major and Mrs C. R. M. Parr, who showed them over the

house and gardens. Before leaving at about 7.30 pm, the party was entertained to a cup of tea, for which they had been asked to bring their own sugar. The weather was

dry but extremely dull.

I wasn’t around in 1945 but I can remember the days of post-war rationing. I recall that

my three year old brother once sneaked into the larder and ate the whole weekly ration of cheese at one go. In an age when we mostly eat too much sugar I wonder what

modern children would make of having to bring your own sugar for a day out?

A snippet from the Society Archives by John Innes

Newsletter - December 2016

Uploading AV shows on the web by Bob Breach Many of us are often looking for various ways to share our images with others. One way

that you might not have considered is uploading an AV (audio visual) show of your images to one of the (free) web based hosting services. For example, the Society has done this

using U-Tube for the accepted images from the Solihull Open Exhibition, which can be viewed as four separate AVs (colour, mono, nature and creative) on the Exhibition

website:

http://solihullopenexhibition.co.uk/archives/2016-2/winning-images

However there are other video hosting services that you might consider, including Vimeo, which does not carry any adverts and has a free registration, provided you do not upload

more than 500 Mb a week and 25Gb a year. This should be enough for shows up to 10-15 minutes long. If you need more storage you can pay a monthly fee. Your AV needs to be

output as an MP4 file, which most AV software should be able to do (I use Pro Show Gold). When you upload an AV you can provide various bits of (editable) information about it if you wish, and you can also choose whether the AV can be made public or only

seen by nominated people. Thus you can either share your images with the world or just

your immediate family and friends.

To give you an example, here is a link to a short AV I uploaded recently of a trip to see

the stunning autumn display of Japanese Maples at Westonbirt Arboretum. I hope you

enjoy it and maybe it will stimulate you to also have a go at uploading a few AVs.

https://vimeo.com/189521352

Also don’t forget that we have our internal AV competition coming up

on the 7th February. Some workshop notes on creating AVs can be

found in the members’ area of the website, or alternatively have a word with me.

Page 6

Everyone will be aware of the on-line membership software we now use. One of the benefits should become apparent in 2017 as it will automatically send you an email to

remind you to renew your membership. This should drop into your inbox during August, but I say this with the caveat that the date may be earlier or later depending on when you

actually completed the registration process; I’m still learning how some features work so please bear with me on this.

Another good thing is that your details are retained by the system so unless you move house, change phone number, or perhaps more importantly, change your email address,

you will not have to re-enter these again. It is up to you to ensure that your details are up to date so I would ask for co-operation in ensuring this is done.

We moved to an on-line process partly for the reasons above, partly to reduce the work-load on the Membership secretary (me!), and partly because it offered an alternative

group email to Yahoo. The Yahoo system worked well for some time but in recent times it has become more troublesome and I know that some members did not receive emails

from it at all. The new group email works well - we know this from the tests I undertook earlier this season. I know many of you became irritated by the sheer volume of emails that were generated during this testing period. I do apologise for this but it was important

to prove that it worked as expected and it was necessary to do it ‘live’. So we know it works in that a message can be sent to everyone in a group but we also know that every-

one will also receive all replies unless the correct protocol is followed. So how do you use it?

The first thing you need is the correct address to send your message to -

members.solihullphotographicsociety@membermojo.co.uk will be sent to all current paid-up members but you MUST send from the email address you registered on the system, any other address will result in a ‘failure to send’ message and will not go anywhere. In

case you haven’t already noticed from group mails the message will show only that it came from Membermojo and will NOT include your name and address. It is very important

therefore to include your name AND email address in your text, this is best as the first line of your mail but can be at the end if you prefer.

When you read such an email and decide to reply please be aware that clicking the usual ‘reply’ button will result in everyone on that mailing group receiving

your reply as well as the original sender; this will happen irrespective of whether you use the ‘reply’ or ‘reply all’ buttons. Unless this is what you actually intend to do you should reply using the address supplied by the original sender, which

is why it is so important to include this in the first place.

One final point - There are a few ex-members who have not rejoined for one reason or another but who wish to remain in contact with the society; if you want to include these in an email the ad-

dress is slightly different - all.solihullphotographicsociety@membermojo.co.uk which as the name suggests will go to

all members and ex-members. The same rules as above apply.

Our new membership system (Membermojo) by Jim Hiscox

Newsletter - December 2016

Page 7

Entry to our National Open Exhibition closes on the 18th December so you now only have a very short time to enter and I would encourage as many members as possible to submit

an entry.

In case anyone is unsure what the ‘Open’ is the major clues are in the title - it’s run by the Solihull Photographic Society, it’s a National Open meaning that it is open to residents of

the UK, and it’s an Exhibition meaning that we have an actual exhibition of all accepted prints plus a DVD running of all digital acceptances which is free to attend, local (held at

Solihull School) and open to everyone.

Why should you enter? Every category (3 Print and 4 Digital) has an award called the Solihull Members Medal which is a PAGB Bronze medal and can only be awarded to current members of the society. There are Gold and Silver medals plus ribbons too but these can

be awarded to any entrant.

You may or may not be aware that we now have a website specifically for the

Open and I strongly encourage you to visit it at:

www.solihullopenexhibition.co.uk

While there you can find all the infor-mation and rules about the exhibition

as well as viewing a digital version of last year’s catalogue plus videos of all

the digital acceptances.

We took the controversial decision to drop the traditional printed catalogue for this year and replace it with both a version on DVD which all entrants receive free of additional

charge and the on-line version which means that the entire world can view it (if they want) whereas the printed one was only available to entrants. Everyone also gets to view the entire catalogue of accepted digital entries for free; previously this was available to

purchase but only ran on a PC and not on a MAC. So improvements all round we believe. Why controversial? Our exhibition belongs to a group of exhibitions from around the UK

known as British Photographic Exhibitions, BPE for short. There are currently 20 such exhibitions, Solihull was a founding member and is one of only 8 to include prints, and thus able to still hold a physical exhibition. Our original intention was to move to an

exclusively on-line catalogue but the other clubs strongly resisted this (there is a constitution, rules etc.), and the consensus was that a catalogue either on paper or CD

must be produced. We also apply for, and have always been granted, patronage by the PAGB which must be

supported by, in our case, the MCPF. Neither organisation had any objections to our original proposal, in fact the PAGB specifically allow for on-line catalogues.

If you have any questions drop me an email or see me at one of the meetings, just don’t leave it too long!

Solihull Open Exhibition of Photography 2017 by Jim Hiscox

Newsletter - December 2016