Amersham Beyond Group - 1st Oct. 2020

Meeting Notes on Creative Photography and Photo-Art
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spb
Posts: 146
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

Amersham Beyond Group - 1st Oct. 2020

Post by spb » Sat Oct 03, 2020 2:08 pm

Face to face meetings have been cancelled due to COVID 19 but the October 2020 meeting was held on Zoom and a recording of the meeting can be viewed by APS Members here.

MONTHLY CHALLENGES
All Amersham Beyond Group Challenge images can be seen at Amersham Beyond Group on Flickr.

For APS Members only this month's images are also available for viewing and commenting at the APS Members Only Facebook Site
IMPORTANT - please spend time viewing and commenting upon the images - this is our primary source of feedback at the moment. Authors are also encouraged to provide commentary on their creations here.

We viewed the current Challenges which are;

#14 JOINERS AND COLLAGES (no new contributions this month)

#15 FINE ART FLOWERS

and the latest;

#16 INSPIRED BY… / IN THE STYLE OF …

The sources of inspiration for our members were broad in the extreme, from Julia Margaret Cameron (from the 19th century) to Milos Nejezchleb via Art Deco and Martin Parr.

The popular Challenge of Fine Art Flowers continued to resonate, with Georgia O’Keeffe and Nick Knight also featuring as inspirations.

The next Challenge is;

#17 ABSTRACT

A new image that is immaterial, conceptual and non-specific. It should not be identifiable and yet be appealing in colour tone and form. By post-processing or in-camera.

We had some discussion in the meeting about the key requirement that it should not be identifiable. By this I mean that a blurred, close-up or otherwise unusual view of, say a flower, would not qualify if the viewer could still identify that it was a flower. This is the pure definition of abstract and seeks to ensure that we work to produce new images, rather than perhaps offer pre-existing material such as those exposure errors that we all capture by mistake now and again.

Examples were shown to the meeting of some classical abstract art by Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko, O’Keeffe and Pollock. OK yes I know that these are all painters but we photographers have an amazing set of capabilities in our cameras and computers to do all that and more. For some really exciting new ideas search online for Procedural or Algorithmic Art. Just in case you think that this stuff is all a bit random and pointless, I mentioned that a Pollock sold in 2006 for $140M. Well, it’s a target to aim for!

Artists like Pollock believed that it was the viewer (and not the artist) who define and interpret the meaning of the abstract artwork thus, there is no relevance on what artist thinks or conveys while producing the work. To this end his paintings were merely numbered for identification.

For the final outing of Fine Art Flowers next month and given the popularity of Georgia O’Keeffe’s style I suggested that those still working on their (increasingly dying) flowers might get in really close for some dramatic compositions.

NEXT MEETING

The next meeting will be held on 5th November by Zoom.

BACK OF BEYOND – DIARIES

Buying a Camera. A new member might be forgiven for thinking that they need to go out and spend a lot of money on a fancy camera in order to get the most from their hobby. In fact the smarphone in their pocket is quite sufficient for many photographic projects and is especially discrete. If buying a camera don’t default to a full frame DSLR unless you know why you need one. Most senior club members have long-since migrated to smaller formats; APS-C, Micro Four-Thirds or Enthusiast Compacts. They weigh far less (taking the lenses into account) cost less and are equally as capable in almost all respects.

More notes on equipment, both hardware and software can be found here. Since writing this, Serif Affinity Photo has become an even greater competitor to Adobe Photoshop and should be given serious consideration. Several of our members are very satisfied with it.

Cheers, Steve

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