Blog archive - September 2008

The Blog was created during November 2008. The September, October, and early November Blog archives were constructed retrospectively.

28 September.

Links page updated

The links page has been updated to link to the websites (where they exist) for the judges and speakers this season.

25 September, by Bill Chadband. (Meeting and event reports)

First Print Competition 23 September 2008

David Butler was the judge for this first of the new look competitions (of Prints only). He made it clear at the outset that judging involved personal preferences, when he noted that he would have to pass all the members in order to escape from the Hall. However members were aware that David is an experienced, competent judge, consistent in his comments and willing to discuss with members afterwards his approach and his marking.

Comments in the beginners section were that mounts must not compete with the image and extraneous elements in an image must not detract from the main subject. He regularly noted that images appeared too large in the frame with little around them to suggest either scale or how they fitted into their location. Occasionally he felt one complex image would be better split into several relevant images by zooming in on the relevant parts. Some black and white images did not have the tonal range to be successful monochromes (particularly when the image was predominantly green vegetation). Reflections might be sharp, or fuzzy, and he suggested a stone be cast to produce ripples which would confirm that the image was indeed a reflection.

In discussion afterwards the use of the Lastolite reflector (to brighten up shaded parts such as eyes under a brim) was urged. These discussions continued over a drink in the Farmers Arms.

23 September, by Barry Pearson. (Members' competition results)

First Clubworker Prints Competition results

23 September, by Jill Hargreaves & Richard Scaife. (Meeting and event reports)

First summer event: Richard Scaife's Treasure Hunt

Summary from Jill Hargreaves

The first summer event (at the end of May) was a Treasure Hunt organized by Richard Scaife. He also managed to arrange lovely weather!

Eight members enjoyed a walk round Poynton "looking up" for answers to the clues. Which date has the mason's symbols? Is Mayfield a cottage, terrace or view? We all learnt more about the history of the village, had some exercise and a few even managed to remember to take photos!

Postscript from Richard Scaife

We all ended the evening in the pub!

One or two interesting points that came up while I was photographing the unusual number of name and date plaques in Poynton:

Did you know that Greggs the Bakers is in “The Forge”, dated 1877?
The old Vernon School crest (now the Community Centre where we used to hold our digital meetings) is dated 1838. This is very difficult to read but can be made easier by playing with it in Photoshop.
While I was photographing the crest on the old police houses near the Centre in Park Lane one of Poynton’s older residents come over and said that he remembered when, before the houses were built, the fair used to come and set up there, in the fields. This was apparently quite a big event at the time. Can anyone in the club remember this?
The oldest and one of the most decorative date plaques is dated 1810.

22 September, by Bill Chadband. (Meeting and event reports)

David Kitching – Dragonflies and Chinese Dragons

A full house gathered on Tuesday 16th September to hear David Kitching describe two of his passions. The first was Dragonflies & Damselflies. David described how he became interested in these creatures while reconnoitering the Middlewood Way, a quarter of a century ago as Countryside Ranger for Cheshire CC. We saw images of a wide range of Dragonflies and Damsel flies of a standard that would have done well in our club competitions. David had an easy-going conversational style that carried his audience with him. We were pleased that our Canon Digital projector was able to do full justice to David’s images.

Dragonflies all have the same number of segments (I counted 9!) but have a wonderful variety of colours or markings; and it was interesting to note the the same dragonfly would change from yellowish to bluish over the season (if it lived long enough). The end of April was the time to start looking for them, and with its two million or so ponds or Marl pits, Cheshire County was a favoured area. Of the 45 or so different species, 25 have been found in Cheshire. They need vegetation by water and floating sphagnum moss was a suitable habitat. Dragonflies are cold blooded and need the sun to warm them up in the morning, So early morning is a good time to try and photograph them. David’s Web site at www.brocross.com gives more information. Sadly the book, “The Dragonflies and Damselflies of Cheshire” written with Richard Gabb is out of print. Richard was in the audience to help David with the finer details.

David’s Web site also has a section on Chinese Steam trains, the subject of the second half talk.. Apparently he was lucky enough to visit Northern China in 1992; and made further visits in 2004, 2006 and 2008.

Many of the images David regaled us with are to be seen on this web site. These images were notable for their brooding atmospheres particularly when taken at sunrise or sunset. David noted that steam was being replaced by Diesel at an alarming rate, and many of the Road-Rail intersections have already been replaced by road underpasses, reducing the photographic appeal of the intersection. They found that Mines (including opencast coal mines) were some of the best places to observe steam locos. Some of the best photographs were taken in the far north, close to the Russian border, but being winter-time with average temperatures of minus 30 degrees, the cameras did not always function. At a particular spot they might have to wait several hours for the appearance of the steam locomotive. Dedication indeed!! (and apparently they are going back this winter for more shots, before the steam disappears entirely.)

President Roger Dye thanked David for an eloquent, fascinating evening and told him that, anytime he wished, we had a place for him in North Cheshire Photographic Society.

20 September.

New galleries uploaded

There is a new gallery "Mixed Panel" by Dorothy Redford in our galleries page.
There is a new gallery "Beijingers" by Tony Redford in our galleries page.

18 September.

New download available

Map of Hazel Grove Bowling & Tennis Club (Large PDF) from Roger Dye.
Also available on the Downloads page.

18 September.

New galleries uploaded

There are 3 new galleries by Martin Currie in our galleries page: "India", "Wildlife", and "Venice".

17 September.

New download available

"Notes on Conversion to Monochrome, Contrast Manipulation and Toning" (Word document by Martin Currie)
Also available on the Downloads page.

16 September, by Joyce Streets. (Notices and news)

Some dates for handover to the Selection Committee

Work is needed for selection for the following competitions:

Prints	Anglo Scottish Battle at Keswick	End of September
Digital images	We would also like to have a digital club entry into ‘The Great British Cup’ (PAGB competition). We will need 20 digital images for this competition.	Tuesday 21 October (no later)
Prints	Martin Avery Trophy	Tuesday 11 November
Digital images	Wilmslow Guild	Tuesday 11 November

Handover to: Joyce Streets

16 September, by Barry Pearson. (Notices and news)

Redesign of the NCPS Website

During August 2008, Peter Redford proposed a new visual layout for the pages of the NCPS website. Peter demonstrated three pages in the new style: a Home page, an Exhibition page, and a Committee page. A small sub-committee comprising Roger Dye, Tony Redford, Barry Pearson, and Peter himself, agreed that the crisp, modern design was the way ahead.

Barry proposed that the new format should be engineered using the latest powerful implementation standards. More details are supplied below, but in summary these use stylesheets for both overall layout and details of styling. Barry demonstrated the power of using stylesheets in this way, showing how it is possible to change such features as widths, fonts, colours, and many other details. The sub-committee agreed to use this method, and provisionally agreed many of the details. This implementation method is hardly visible to the viewer, but it will make it much easier to change the page design in future. Although it is used by many major websites across the world, it appears to be used by few if any photographic society websites.

Barry also changed the buttons a little, adding "About us" and "Contact us" pages instead of the existing "Location" and "Subscriptions" pages. The "About us" page is where we will "sell" ourselves to visitors and new members. It needs more ideas and contributions.

Only the most important pages have been converted to the new format so far. Some more pages will be converted, but most older pages will typically remain as they are. (Conversion is not a mechanistic process!)

Please tell Barry of any problems such as broken links or difficulty reading the pages on certain browsers, etc. Make suggestions for further improvement.

Techie stuff

About 14 years ago the people developing technical standards for the web proposed "tables" as a way of laying out the content of web pages. For example, we often see columns of information, and/or headers and footers. Styling information was attached to the content of web pages to specify fonts, colours, boldness, and many other features. The problem was that this was all built into each web page, making it hard work to change any of these aspects across a whole website.

There is a well known solution to this type of problem, which isn't specific to the web: "stylesheets". The styles should be specified in just one file on the website, so that major changes can be made to styles and even layout "just" by amending one page. Specifications for using styles sheets for the web were published over 10 years ago.

Unfortunately, browsers didn't implement them very soon or very well. They tended to be OK where the stylesheets were just used to style individual features, such as fonts and colours. But they tended to fail when trying to layout the main components of the page. The problem was made worse by the lack of good tools for designing and developing websites that use stylesheet-positioning. So even websites that used stylesheets typically still used tables for layout purposes.

Even recent browsers haven't got everything right, but they do enough for most purposes. Web development tools have got much better. In perhaps the last 5 years that it has become sensible to design complicated pages this way, although it often still needs kludges! (And any given page may look different in different browsers, or with different browser settings).

Most of the major "visually important" websites in the world now use this approach: BBC, Times, Tesco, YouTube, and very many others. They have been redesigned and re-engineered in the last few years and adopted this method. (Some special cases such as Amazon, Google News, and Wikipedia, don't use stylesheets for positioning, but their reasons don't apply to NCPS).

Photographic societies typically haven't made the change yet. NCPS has decided "now is the right time" to switch from tables to stylesheet-layout.

11 September, by Bill Chadband. (Meeting and event reports)

The First Meeting of the New Session: "Travel Panel" (9th Sept 2008)

Roger Dye donned his Presidential Red Bowler, and silence descended on an audience of 38 people. Roger commented that despite many members still being on holiday we had a room-full of eager participants. And he was pleased to see so many new faces. He hoped to see them all regularly at the club, taking a full part in the proceedings. He had a first pleasant duty of presenting to Alan Saunders a Certificate of Merit, earned at the last L&CPU Exhibition. Alan had not been present at the L&CPU special meeting to receive his certificate then.

To start the session, an evening of members images from recent holidays had been planned - 4, 5 or 6 images said the new Syllabus. It became clear that though they were good photographers, many of our members were lousy mathematicians!

Colin Pickles began the Print show with a dozen or so prints relating to his recent holidays. Trevor Rogers tried to redress the balance with a single picture summing up this Summer’s holiday - a forlorn wife looking through a cottage window at the downpour outside. Tony Redford reminded us of better days with four prints showing sun-rise over Bryce Canyon. Graham Johnston apologised that his poor sight had led him to believe that he could show 456 prints. These were A4 size to facilitate carrying so many, but he limited himself to showing only half a dozen images of his trip to South Africa. Geoff Robinson was surprised to find he had 7 prints relating to his trip to Venice. Although some were straight shots he confessed to digital manipulation of several of them.

After an early tea break during which the Print Box was removed and the Digital projector system set up, the digital show began (There were no film slides to show!) John Garner began with a Pictures-to-Exe presentation of his visit to Sydney, Australia, where their son was living. Some basic instruction was necessary as the show galloped through his dozen images at rapid pace. The P-to-E programme allows on to set the delay between transitions to some reasonable value (say 10 seconds) but by default uses only about 3 seconds. John found it impossible to speak quickly enough to make his comments before the image changed. Given the small default time, the alternative is to press the space bar once to retain the image, until on pressing the space bar a second time, the count-down is resumed. If the transition has already happened, it is possible to move backwards using the left hand arrow on the keyboard. This does presuppose that there is enough light to see the keyboard!!

John Bawden gave a P2E presentation of a climbing holiday in Wales. John Ade had visited Portsmouth and the Spinnaker Tower, from which fine views (and a cup of tea) are available. Gordon Robson had been intrigued by the apparent ramshackle wooden buildings he found in Zermatt. Joyce Streets had visited South America where she was attracted to the bright dresses of the ladies, and the Llamas Apparently the natives dress to impress the tourists and each picture requires a monetary contribution to the local economy. Jill Hargreaves was impressed by the Vulcan Bomber and we saw several images of this monster plane at rest and flying. Richard Scaife could not fly so high, but illustrated his photographic skills with several high-flying motor-bikes and Riders. The pair set off together; almost parted in mid-air, having shot up a ramp, and presumably were re-united as they hit the ground. We never saw the final landing sequence, so still don't know if there is a steady stream of recruits to take the place of their dead heros. Bill Chadband related, via a 5-image P2E presentation, the sad tale of the demise of his wife’s hair comb.It was all to do with a naughty Cockatoo.

Colin Pickles completed the evening with several images from out recent club Berlin visit. There were several other possible images to be shown, but as the time was now 10.10pm these would-be-authors withdrew their images and allowed us all to go home satisfied with a successful evening. It was the handing-in night for the first Print competition, but President Roger Dye announced that new-comers would be given an extra weeks grace, so that they would not be penalised in the great race to become club Photographer of the Year.

9 September, by Roger Dye. (Meeting and event reports)

Poynton Show 2008 - a family occasion

Click on thumbnails for full size images.

The 108th Poynton Show was held as usual on the Saturday of August Bank Holiday Weekend in Poynton’s own lakeside park.

It is a show for all the family - and a family occasion - NCPS were welcomed fully back into that family this year as official photographers for all the show including the equestrian section, and we got acknowledgment in the show programme. The weather was kind this year, although photographically challenging, but we did get nice sky backgrounds for the first half of the day. Despite the recent weather, ground conditions were good got those on two or four legs, and for light vehicles although heavy vehicles had to be towed on and off - one of the towing tractors expiring in the main arena at a critical juncture added to the spectacle.

As always, the show included some spectacular displays such as the Bold Dog Motorcycle Stunt Team and the Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service chip pan fire demonstration. A rather different spectacle was provided by the dance display from Erd, Poynton’s twin town in Hungary.

Our contribution was as always very well organised by Richard Scaife. Some seven other members contributed to setting up our stand, judging the photography competition, staffing the stand as well as taking photographs, others were observed just enjoying the show. Our stand was well situated at the juncture between the creative hobbies competition displays and the commercial delicatessen area. This year the loan of his personal print display stands by Jon Allanson much enhanced the stand and allowed us to display a wide range of member’s work including several images from the 2007 show.

Why not come an join us next year? Many events occur in parallel, so there is much to do (and you don't have to work all the time). You get privileged access to the best shooting positions, over 10000 models, and even the chance to be part of the action such as being chased round the arena by two clowns in a car with a steering problem — these two enhanced the crowd appeal of their display by driving straight at the official photographer in the ring with them (your president) but swerving at the last moment. I am also pleased to say that I foresaw the course of the display and managed to dodge the water spay the clowns directed over the ringside crowd and the official guests!

The family nature of the show is apparent in the final two images. The society official presenting our “Best Print” award is, as his uniform shows, the Crew Manager from our own Poynton Fire Station and also the individual in full kit with extinguisher at the ready in case the chip pan display gets a little too spectacular. The final image shows Grahame Mitchell the Show President awarding the trophy for the senior Show Jumping Competition to Michelle Anthony, his granddaughter and also the organiser of the equestrian section of the show. The generation missing from this picture is Leslie Mitchell the Show Secretary.

Roger Dye

(All photographs by Roger Dye).

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