Amersham Beyond Group - 7th March 2019

Meeting Notes on Creative Photography and Photo-Art
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spb
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

Amersham Beyond Group - 7th March 2019

Post by spb » Sat Mar 09, 2019 7:13 pm

When I set up the Amersham Beyond Group (ABG) in December of last year I was expecting the historical attendance of the Digital Group to shrink but hoped for active participation by a large percentage of members. What has actually happened is that although the membership of the group has changed somewhat the numbers have not declined at all and active participation is an impressive 90% and rising. Many thanks to all.

MONTHLY CHALLENGES

A handful of new images were enjoyed for Challenge #1: Blur and Out-of-Focus and Challenge #2: Ice or Water Close-Up. Intentional Camera Movement is now firmly established as technique to bear in mind, especially on dull days and several members are getting hooked on freezing flowers!

We decided as a group to officially retire Challenges after three meetings but any creative image can always be submitted in the general ‘Other Creative’ bucket, so #1 Blurred or Out-of-Focus images could still be seen next month.

#3 HIGH-KEY

I think it would be fair to say that more members had difficulty with this Challenge than the previous two. In particular, identifying simple subjects best suited to it. Secondly, processing the image to get the desired result without losing quality and without achieving an overall greyness. Several members cropped images heavily to isolate a subject but resolution was then critically lacking. Nevertheless many excellent images were amongst the 48 submitted and I look forward to more next month.

Members are reminded that tips for taking high-key images in-camera, and for post-processing high-key effects in a image editor were in the notes of the last meeting.

The next Challenge will be;

#4 SELF PORTRAIT

I understand that the idea of taking a photo of oneself and then showing it to friends and colleagues sends a shudder through many people. So – there are get-outs in the following guidelines for this Challenge;

- it should include at least some part of you
- not necessarily your face
- just your shadow would be acceptable
- it should be creative and absolutely not passport-style
- it should be of you, taken under your direction, although not necessarily by you
- ideally it will hint at something of your character or interests.

I showed a large number of interesting, creative, whacky and thoughtful self portraits from the internet. Type ‘self portrait’ into Flickr or any other image search for inspiration. Ignore those that clearly need counselling. After all, we can’t stop the kids taking selfies and we should have some fun too.

We have achieved a 90% submission rate from members who have attended two or more Amersham Beyond Group meetings. I would like to hit 100% next month. You can’t argue that the subject matter is unavailable!

Please re-read the FAQ guidelines for submitting images and especially naming them. I have also clarified the wording to indicate that images should be newly processed/produced for the ABG but don’t necessarily have to be new exposures. I’m trying to encourage learning and practice rather than finding something already completed from the past that fits the bill.

THE BACK OF BEYOND – DIARIES

PHOTOSHOP CC ACTIONS
If you are using Photoshop Creative Cloud, you may not have tried using Actions. These are recordings of a series of keystrokes and commands that can be replayed with one click or a keyboard shortcut. There are many supplied with Photoshop, thousands more can be downloaded from the internet and you can record your own. I have recorded a few that I use for almost every image; creating borders, a 50% gray dodge/burn layer, and most usefully, a couple of high pass sharpening actions using smart objects.

CAMERA REPAIRS
Julie has had excellent camera repairs done (fairly) locally at a very good price by Alan Marlow. See his website for the range of equipment that he tackles and also note that he is only planning to work part time in 2019 prior to retiring.

YOUTUBE PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS
Sarah has recommended the PixImperfect Photoshop and Lightroom Tutorials by Unmesh Dinda. Google it for almost 500 free videos of high quality on every related topic under the sun.

Cheers, Steve

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