MONTHLY CHALLENGES
Current and past Challenge images can be seen at Amersham Beyond Group on Flickr.
For APS Members only, the images are also available for viewing and commenting on Facebook here.
The current Challenges are;
#46 NATURE AS ABSTRACT ART
#47 OUT OF THIS WORLD
… and the latest Challenge;
#48 TONDO
A Tondo is a circular image or work of art (Italian: Rotondo)
The crop and/or main subject should be circular.
There must be something of the photographer’s creativity in the images ie not just a picture of a button or a wheel!
The adventurous could investigate the Tiny Planet effect and there was a link to a short video tutorial of the method in last month’s notes. Quite a few members put the effect to good use. The image being rotated needs to be square or the result will be oval. Some learning points were that the choice of image is key, with buildings or objects projecting into the sky for maximum effect. Several mentioned difficulties in hiding the join where the image wraps around to meet itself. The video tutorial addresses this problem with a good trick using Filter>Other>Offset in Photoshop to deal with the join before applying the Render>Polar Coordinates filter.
It should be noted that panoramas are not the only starting point for Tiny Planets and other images can produce surprising results.
Tip: To produce very clean, graphical images I have previously used Topaz Simplify>BuzzSim but am quite impressed by the use of Adobe Camera Raw>Detail>Noise Reduction where extreme values have a similar effect without modifying the image. Even JPG images can be processed via Filter>Camera Raw Filter
Tip: Kaleida Cam (iOS) produces instant kaleidoscope images onscreen in many mirrored configurations. Addictive.
Tip: Bluristic (iOS, Android) long-time favourite app for blurring the world creatively. NB keep your finger on the shutter for the duration of the exposure.
Tip: Circular Tiny Planet Editor (iOS) has been recommended. On Android Tiny Planet Maker (untested) seems similar and there are others for instant results and to avoid Photoshop.
The next Challenge will be;
#49 CHEER UP!
The aim is to evoke positive, uplifting, emotional feelings in the viewer.
Love, joy, happiness, humour, excitement, tenderness, triumph, hope … etc. Free free to include a caption within the image if it helps to tell the story.
Of course, our own happy holiday snaps may not evoke the same happiness in the viewers who were not there!
BACK OF BEYOND DIARIES
Full Fibre. As covered last month our Full Fibre installation has finally been completed by Gigaclear with a few more hiccups caused by the first attempt from Zen and Openreach not being fully cancelled. I have to say that support staff at Plusnet, Zen and Gigaclear have all been excellent at trying to make the systems work. Openreach wouldn’t talk to me.
Scams. Be very wary that it is the wild west out there with email scams to ‘buy gift cards for me’ amongst others desperate to get you to click on a link or hand over control of your PC. Oh, and our credit card has been cloned.
WinDirStat. If your PC hard disk is getting full, This is a free app that has been around for years to give you a visual representation of your storage. It helps you to spot big files that you don’t need. I sometimes use a program called iWatermark to put captions onto images for club shows. It is very handy but WinDirStat revealed that a few projects of a few hundred images in total had resulted in 130GB of backups and logs from this program! WinDirStat is here. The WinDirStat.zip is a portable program that does not need to be installed and runs from anywhere on a PC. UPDATE - Mike also recommends FolderSizes which he feels has a better interface.
AI for Titles. We can’t use Generative AI for our competitive images but there’s no ban on using it for generating lists of interesting and imaginative titles. I got two lists of 15 ideas each from Chat GPT having just described the subject and the intent. Occasional use is free, no need to register or login.
NEXT MEETING
Thursday 2nd January 2025 in the Large Barn Hall at the Community Centre.
Cheers, Steve.