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11 March, by Dave & Lynda Hockin.

Salford exhibitions - War Museum & Lowry

We went to the Don McCullin exhibition at the War Museum Salford recently, well worth a visit.

Also went over to the Lowry, they have three exhibitions on at the moment, again well worth a visit.

If you go, park at the War Museum, £4 all day. The car park for the shopping outlet is very expensive (at least it was last time we went in it).

The Don McCullin exhibition, and one of the Lowry exhibitions, have been added to the Diary page.

10 March, by Barry Pearson. (Members' competition results)

Third Clubworker Projected Image Competition results

These are the results of the Competition judged by Ian Whiston on 9 March.
Entries 1 to 5 were judged, 126 Digital Images in all (no slides).
25 people entered the "Advanced" class. 1 person entered the "Intermediate" class.

Competition results

"Worker of the Year"

Intermediate Worker - Brian Adams
Projected Image Worker - Geoff Robinson
Print Worker (unchanged by this competition)
Club Worker

Best Image in competition

Graffiti Street by Dorothy Redford

Problems with entries

As usual, many images didn't conform to the guidelines. It is possible that one or two got marked-down as a result. Types of problems included:

Problems that were corrected by the DiCentra software, probably without adverse consequences, for example correction of the colour profile. But software used by others clubs in interclub competitions, or our own Exhibition software, may not correct the same problems, and the results would be a visible degradation (or even a failure).
Problems that were corrected (or at least tolerated) by the DiCentra software, but possibly with adverse consequences, for example size errors. Images that are too small, (at least one image was sized for a 1024x768 projector), will not fill the screen, and lose impact. Images that are too large may not be resized downwards to the same quality that the author could do. (Some images were in portrait-orientation, but still 1400 pixels on their longer side, which was their height. In fact, the maximum height is always 1050). And software used by others clubs in interclub competitions, or our own Exhibition software, may not correct the same problems.
One or two images gave the impression of having had unused areas filled with an unintended colour, for example white. (Although this may have been intended, of course).

6 March, by Bill Chadband. (Committee reports)

Committee Meeting 3 March 2010

The results of the L&CPU AGM and Print and PDI competitions were reported (see elsewhere) . Christine Widdall, the new L&CPU President, had agreed to open the 2011 Annual Exhibition on Wednesday 9 February. The 2010 Annual Exhibition was reviewed. It was noted that the Exhibition had again been successful. We needed more door tickets for the Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and more Catalogues (say 300) next time. We had not been able to set up on the Wednesday morning this year but agreed that it was important that we should endeavour to do so in future. This might mean negotiating with the Keep Fit class, next time, but hopefully we could book the morning for future Exhibitions if we did so early enough. It was agreed that we should invest in a good Radio Microphone for the future. Bill Chadband would look into this. For the Friday evening of the next Exhibition Graham Johnston would investigate booking a top class Photographic speaker.

A general discussion on the need to keep up to date with software on our computer (re Windows 7; Lightroom 3; and Photoshop CS5 and elements came to no definite conclusion and was left for discussion at the next committee meeting.

Jon Allanson was standing down as Selection Committee chairman. Suggested that three people was an adequate size for the Selection Committee. Jon would run the club meeting on 4 May 2010, when many members would be in Venice. The Digital workshop would be moved to 11th May 2010 at Poynton. Jill reported that we now had 67 members; and Geoff Robinson noted that the increased membership had brought in increased subscriptions. After a refreshment break proposed resolutions for the AGM were discussed. Barry had proposed two parallel resolutions noting that we had had no Slide entries this year in competitions and formalizing Projected Digital Images to replace Slides in our various documents. The committee agreed to propose this to the AGM.

Graham reported that next session’s syllabus was mostly complete, with three Digital evenings yet to be decided.

The next committee meeting was set for Wednesday 21st April 2010.

5 March, by Bill Chadband. (Meeting and event reports)

Digital Evening 2 March 2010

The monthly digital evenings have been running for several years now and most of the basics have been covered. Increasingly, the question is raised as to what the members now want. President Roger Dye had requested suggestions from members on what topics should be considered, and at what level. This evening was based on the response.

Dave Hockin entitled his contribution “Masks for Dummies”, particularly using Photoshop Elements. Dave, with Lynda’s assistance considered what masks are, and the sort of things one could use masks for. Dave noted that although Elements does not support masks directly, the effect can be mimicked by utilizing the masks associated with adjustment layers. There are a variety of adjustment layers, and any of them can be used since they are not being used to make an actual adjustment. Dave provided two A4 sided notes of his presentation that can now be downloaded from our web site.

Jon Allanson considered ways of altering the tonal range of images; particularly pertinent if the image is to be converted to black and white. He illustrated, with examples, why the obvious method of de-saturation, is rarely the best. Selections and masks came into his presentation.

Barry Pearson volunteered the information that he viewed images as a kind of jig-saw puzzle, to be dealt with in parts. The first stage was to make the selections of the various parts of his puzzle. These parts would be dealt with individually before re-assembling the complete image. In general the background part would need to be de-emphasized by simplifying, toning down or de-focussing etc. The important parts of the image could be emphasized in a variety of ways.

Barry also proposed to put his notes on the NCPS Website (Downloads section). These notes would embrace Making, Saving and Combining selections and editing layer masks.

Roger Dye thanked all speakers, noting especially that it was good to have a new speaker in Dave (and Lynda!) He thanked everyone for their input and in particular Graham Johnston for suggesting the problem image that Barry worked on.

4 March.

New link on the links page

There is a new link on the Links page. This is to the Overland Safaris website of Steph and Dave Clack.

3 March.

New download available

This supports the presentation by Dave and Lynda Hockin at the Digital Workshop of 2 March 2010. This describes a simple but powerful technique for overcoming one of the significant limitations of Photoshop Elements. It describes (with screen shots) how to achieve the effect of attaching a layer mask to any layer, by instead grouping that layer with a "null adjustment layer" with its own layer mask. The tutorial also identifies some of the ways of viewing and exploiting layer masks in Photoshop Elements.

Masking in Photoshop Elements (PDF by Dave & Lynda Hockin)
Also available on the new Downloadable tutorials page

2 March, by Barry Pearson.

New download available

I developed this during the preparation for the Digital Workshop of 2 March 2010, but it is generally applicable. It takes for granted that you are able to make selections, and describes how to save selections to be used at a later date, how to combine separate selections into more complicated selections (and save those too), and (still under development) how to manipulate selections by direct editing of layer masks.

Handling selections and layer masks (PDF by Barry Pearson)
Also available on the new Downloadable tutorials page

27 February, by Bill Chadband. (Meeting and event reports & Interclub competition results)

Competition with Chapel Camera Club

Results of interclub competition with Chapel CC, 23 February

On Tuesday 23 February we welcomed members of Chapel Club to Poynton for a Print and DPI battle. Our Judge was Graham Shaw, a member of Sale Photography Club, who informed us that Landscape photography had been an early passion of his. He noted that with only 40 images to consider he could spend more time than usual on each image. This gave us a better than usual insight into a judge’s thinking. Inevitably, faced with an array of good images, a judge is led to comment on the small aspects of an image which detract, in the judge’s view, from perfection. Was the girl in the picture a real girl, or a mannequin? Would the image of the bridge, extending in an arc into the distance, have been improved with a lorry in the foreground? Does the man in another image look too dis-interested? Did the landscape image appear a bit too flat and monotone? It was revealing that images that have done well in other competitions, became average in this one – giving hope to us all!

The Chapel President proposed the vote of thanks. He was always keen to discover how a judge’s mind worked – it was a shame that this was always a retrospective discovery. Nevertheless, it had been a good competition, with Chapel winning for a change. He made the confession that the “Tree Godess” image which had received high praise from the judge was really two separate images! He only hoped their good luck held as they attempted to get home to Buxton in the snow.

26 February, by Barry Pearson.

New "downloadable tutorials" page, with summaries

There is a new "Downloadable tutorials with summaries" page. It is linked to from the Downloads page and the A-Z & Search page. It identifies the same tutorials that are already listed in the Downloads page, but also provides a summary and (where relevant) a link to the report of the session (for example, Digital Workshop) they related to.

It had become obvious that members with problems that were covered by available downloads were often unaware of the fact. The titles of the tutorials were a bit cryptic, and typically only by reading the tutorial could anyone spot whether they were relevant. Not only was this inconvenient for the person with the problem, it was probably discouraging for the authors of these tutorials. I hope the summaries are sufficient to enable people to identify relevant tutorials. If not, please let me know.

If any of the authors wants to revise the information on the new page, please let me know, and where relevant supply replacement material. Thank you.

24 February, by Roger Dye and Barry Pearson. (Interclub competition results)

Results of interclub competition with Chapel CC, 23 February

This is a summary. Detailed results are in the full article.

Venue: Poynton Civic Hall, hosted by NCPS.
Judge: Graham Shaw.
Gallery of the NCPS selection

Prints: North Cheshire PS: 162; Chapel CC: 169.
PDIs: North Cheshire PS: 160; Chapel CC: 159.

Best Print: Feeding the Birds, Martin Currie
Best PDI: Cold and Frosty Morning, Joyce Streets

Chapel CC won by 6 points, with each club scoring over 320 points.

Detailed results are in the full article.

23 February, by Bill Chadband. (Notices and news)

Gordon Does it Again

A year or so ago Gordon Robson entered a picture of Chrome hill into a competition in a Walking magazine and won £500 worth of Anquet Mapping (1;25000 OS). So he bought an Etrex GPS system which allowed him to plan/record walks in Derbyshire and beyond.

More recently he was shown an advert in Walk Magazine inviting the public to send in images of Snow and Ice with the prospect of winning a Nikon D5000 digital SLR camera so he decided to try again. His entry this time “3 Men and a Dog” was the one we saw in the Exhibition this year. He explained that the photograph was taken from the summit of Mam Tor in Derbyshire looking down the road from Mam Nick into Edale. He had been waiting for this winter`s opportunity for several years and finally was lucky with the right combination of snow, lighting and composition, which was enhanced by the 3 walkers and their dog (taken as seen). He decided that a monochrome image simplified, and emphasised, the composition avoiding distracting colour casts.

He was surprised and of course delighted to discover that his image had won the competition. His only problem is that he is a Canon man with all-Canon lenses. I have explained to Gordon that the D5000 would make an excellent first prize in the next Exhibition Raffle. He has it in mind the sell the camera, at a discount, to any interested party.

I urge you all to refuse all tempting offers (on Gordon’s part) so that the camera can really be a Raffle prize.

22 February.

What topics would you like for the next Digital Workshop?

The next Digital Workshop, on Tuesday 2 March at the H/G Bowling & Tennis Club, is a "Members' choice evening". That means we will try to cover topics suggested by members. But we need to know what the topics are beforehand, and not find out on the night!

Please tell Roger Dye or Tony Redford as soon as possible what topics you would like to see. There will be about 90 minutes or so available, and it is desirable to handle a number of topics, so it is probably better to have well-focused rather than open-ended topics.

It is also worth having a look at the Downloads page to see if there are tutorials covering what you are interested in.

20 February, by Bill Chadband, etc.(Meeting and event reports & Members' exhibition results)

The Exhibition Judge Returns

This is a summary. Photographs and details of awards are in the full article.

Tony Pioli returned on Tuesday 16 February to present the Trophies won by members and comment upon images chosen by the members present (two of their own images, prints or PDIs).

Bill had arranged members’ prints around the room in competition number order to facilitate this process, and was amused to discover that several members apparently could not recognize their own labeling. The prints were considered first. After the refreshment interval President Roger Dye projected the thumbnails of the PDIs (in author folders) for members to choose an image for the judge to comment on. The system worked efficiently and our judge concluded promptly at 10.00pm.

Bill proposed the vote of thanks. He had enjoyed the evening. Tony had been consistent and convincing in his comments. Bill noted that Tony had been working hard for the Society over the past few weeks. He had finished his judging in record time, allowing us to bring forward by a week the consideration of how the prints should be displayed on the stands; which in turn had given more time for the production of the catalogue. The Sunday lunch, at the Beijing restaurant, had been enhanced by the presence of Tony with his wife Pat. However no-one was perfect and Bill had to report that Tony had failed to give Bill even one Commendation in the Exhibition. The audience clapped wildly on hearing this news.

Photographs and details of awards are in the full article.

19 February, by Bill Chadband.

The February 2010 Focus is available as a PDF file, for viewing online or downloading.

18 February, by Barry Pearson. (Notices and news)

Entering PDIs into Clubworker competitions

This is a summary. The full notice with guidelines, checklists, screenshots is here . . . .

This notice describes how to enter PDIs in Clubworker projected image competitions. The timing of this notice is to cater for the 3rd Clubworker competition, but it is intended to apply to future competitions unless otherwise stated at the time.

The Guidelines for digital images in member's events continue to apply. Additional guidelines and checklists are provided in this notice to help reduce the number of non-conforming entries. We will be using the DiCentra software.

For PDIs in Clubworker projected image competitions, there are 3 methods of entry:

Entry form on paper and images on physical medium (USB Drive); the traditional method.
Entry form by email (see below) and images on physical medium; this avoids the need to copy-type the entry forms into a computer for various purposes.
Entry form and images by email (see below).

Here is the full notice, with guidelines, checklists, screenshots, etc . . . .

17 February, by Barry Pearson.

See what the L&CPU website says about our Exhibition

Ian Bramham's winning image "The Dying of the Light" in last Thursday's interclub competition is quite rightly the L&CPU Picture of the Week.

There is a positive news report with results and presentation photos of our interclub competitions of last Wednesday and Thursday.

(These items will not be on their website for ever. See them soon! Thanks to John Royle for putting them there).

16 February, by Bill Chadband, etc. (Meeting and event reports & Interclub competition results)

Report on 2010 Annual Exhibition

This is a summary. Full report with photographs is here . . . .

Another annual exhibition has come and gone, and again we can claim considerable success. Both of our inter-club judges, John Cartlidge on the Wednesday and Tony Dudley on the Thursday, were impressed with the attendance and the general running of the two competitions; as was Norman Thompson the L&CPU President who formally opened the exhibition.

We had 24 competing clubs on the Wednesday and 27 on the Thursday. Unsurprisingly Wigan 10 won both club competitions and the prize of £25 for the best individual print. We were pleased that Ian Bramham of NCPS won the individual prize for the best projected digital image on the Thursday.

Our internal competition judge, Tony Pioli came with his wife Pat on the Thursday, and joined us on the Sunday for our post–exhibition lunch at the Beijing Restaurant.

The Friday “Music night” featured Offerton Methodist Choir for the first half of the evening and Werneth Swing Band for the second half. Both were well received by the audience, many of whom were attracted by the combination Music and Pictures.

Attendances on the first two nights approached our expectations of a full house, with discerning photographers from most participating clubs realizing these were unmissable events. The size of the Friday audience was about the same as last year.

The organisation and running of the Exhibition is a collective club affair. It works so well because many individuals undertake specific duties and the general membership joins in whenever it can. It would be invidious to start naming club individuals who have undertaken specific duties or to try and name the helpers who assisted them in their tasks. A large proportion of the club participated in some way or another. However we should again thank Peter Redford who comes each year with his equipment and computer skills to assist in making our event the envy of many, and Sheila Edwards, a past member of the club, who helps us take the door money and sell raffle tickets

The rest of the report is here . . . .

13 February, by Colin Pickles, etc.

Lunch at the Beijing, Sunday 14 February

Notice: Meal at Beijing Restaurant on Sunday 14 February - menu & booking

Timing is 12.30 for 1.00pm. 30 members, together with the judge and his wife, have pre-booked and are expected to attend.

Postcode for Sat Nav: SK12 1JG. It is at 47-49 Queensway, Poynton, but the number is irrelevant as neither it nor any other unit in the Queensway Parade displays their number. The restaurant is the first unit in the parade from the London Road end (which most people will use). The Beijing is visually very obvious anyway once you are near that end of Queensway which is a short road anyway.

There is parking opposite. It is not true that there is room for 9 million bicycles in the Beijing.

12 February, by Barry Pearson. (Interclub competition results)

Results of the Interclub Competitions in the 2010 Exhibition

Record of holders: Alan Adshead Trophy - Digital Prints Competition
Record of holders: North Cheshire Challenge Trophy - Slides then Projected Digital Images Knock-Out

Wednesday 10 February - Alan Adshead Trophy (digital prints competition)

Judge: John Cartlidge
Results: 2010 Digital Prints Competition for the Alan Adshead Memorial Trophy
Winning club: Wigan 10
Best print: "Windswept" by Gwen Charnock of Wigan 10

North Cheshire Photographic Society entry (4th equal out of 24 clubs)
Gordon Robson:	Alan Saunders:	Martin Currie:	Joyce Streets:	Geoff Robinson:

Thursday 11 February - North Cheshire Challenge Trophy (projected digital images KO)

Judge: Tony Dudley
Results: 2010 Projected Digital Images Knock-Out for the North Cheshire Challenge Trophy
Winning club: Wigan 10
Best image: "The Dying of the Light" by our own Ian Bramham - see below!

North Cheshire Photographic Society entry (2nd out of 27 clubs)
Dorothy Redford:	Ian Bramham:	Alan Saunders:	Geoff Robinson:	Paula Martin:

	News and blog archives	February 2010