Club Trip to the Lake District Sunday 10th November

A minibus will leave the Civic Hall at 8.00am on Sunday 10th November heading for the Buttermere and Borrowdale areas. If you wish to go by minibus please let Colin Pickles know 0161-483-6503 as soon as possible.

Is the Syllabus to your liking?

Now that we are into the 2002-2003 session I am beginning to think about next session's programme and I need your suggestions of what you would like to be included - it is your club, after all!

For a members choice "Set theme" night I have been toying with the following suggestions:
a) Ancient and Modern (in the same picture)
b) Street Lamps/Chimneys/Bridges (ie a choice of three)
c) Red, white and blue (in the same picture)
d) Shadows and/or Reflections
What do you think? What other bright ideas are out there?

A recent article in "The Artist" magazine August 2002 discusses the various functions of shadows eg to define form, to anchor objects, as a compositional device or to help emphasise the light; and asks the artist to consider the colour and tone of the shadow area; is the shadow warm or cool in colour. What about the shadow edges. The article concludes that accurate observation of shadow tone values in particular can be of enormous value if the artist is worried that her painting lacks sparkle or light. All these points apply equally to the photographer (or dare I say it Digital artist!!!)

Sheila Edwards

The Story to Date

Tilman Kleihaus launched our new session on 10th September with a popular talk on Miami, the Everglades and the Keys. We were fascinated to see the many Art Nouveau buildings in Miami and to learn that planners were perpetuating the style in the area.
On 17th September we saw members' pictures from club outings. The evening began with a DVD presentation of our visit to Bruges compiled by Roy Cheetham from still shots and movie camera sequences captured by Audry Cheetham. Although Bruges also predominated in the slide show, after the break, the evening visits to Castlefield and to Chatsworth were both well represented. In particular it was instructive to see the many images of the new "winged" bridge at Castlefield and compare the different ways in which members had treated the subject.

On reaching the Civic Hall for our 1st October meeting I was surprised to see members all taking the air outside the Hall. Apparently Gilbert and Sullivan had taken over our meeting room. Rather than discuss the L&CPU folio in the open air, Joyce Streets was frantically trying to find us an alternative venue. The British Legion obliged and we decamped there. Having viewed the Print Folio, we were then treated to an expert workshop (by Gorden Robson) on Print mounting. From catastrophic beginnings the evening turned out a great success.

Bill Chadband

The Committee Meeting Wed 18th September

At the first meeting of the committee during the session 2002-2003 President Joyce Streets reported that Heidi Denham had agreed to become the Membership Secretary for the club. Bill Chadband and Jon Dixon agreed to be the "milk monitors", ensuring, between them, that milk was available for the interval drinks.

Gorden reported that Keith Brown of Sheffield PS had agreed to judge the Inter-club Slide Competition. In response to letters sent to 58 clubs to remind them of the Club competition dates he was pleased to note that three new clubs had responded (including clubs from Oban and the Isle of Man). He reminded members that 7th January was the last handing-in date for entries to the Annual Exhibition, and that the entries would be judged on Sunday 19th January 2003.

Tony Redford reported on an excellent entry to the first quarterly competition; so much so that 5th entries listed on all forms for Slide and Print sections had had to be withheld to give the judge a reasonable chance of commenting on all entries. This left 52 slides and 50 prints from eighteen entrants remained to be judged.

Colin Pickles reported on his attempts to arrange the next long weekend abroad. Popular opinion had been for a trip to Barcelona, but it seemed that planes left on the Friday afternoon, returning on Monday morning, leaving only two effective days for our money. The best proposal had been for a 4 night visit from Fri 9th May to Tuesday 13th May at a cost of £335. Colin was also looking into the suggestion for an overnight stay in the Lake District on Sat 2nd November.

David Sharp noted that half of the tickets for the Digital day on Sunday 13th October had already gone. The Bar would be open from 12.00 til 2.00pm. Although participants could bring their own lunch meals and eat in the room provided, consideration was still being given to the possibility of refreshment provision. Frank queried if all of our own members were fully aware of the Digital Day.
David noted that 34 of our members were presently paid up for this session.

David was asked to look into the purchase of a "spider" which was fairly cheap but which would assist members in setting up their computer/printer combination for faithful colour reproduction. It would be available for all members to borrow and would hopefully improve print standards at the club.

The club secretary had received a letter from Graham McIntosh explaining that ill-health would prevent him from re-joining the club. President Joyce Streets would write to Graham expressing our sadness on hearing this news. Colin noted that Graham's loss meant that he was the only true (darkroom) photographer left in the club!

Bill Chadband

1st Quarterly Competition - Tuesday, 24th Sept 02

An encouraging 18 members submitted prints and/or slides - including some from our more recent recruits, which is doubly pleasing. This was the first competition held under the new system, where each entry is marked out of 20, in one "open" section, with the entrants top three scores for prints and slides accumulating towards print/slide/clubman totals for the season.

In order to avoid overloading the judge, we eliminated every entrant's fifth listed item, which brought us in line with the total of 100 entries deemed to be about manageable on the night. In fact there were exactly 50 prints and 52 slides submitted to the judge after this adjustment. All entries that were not judged may of course be submitted to a future Quarterly Competition.

Click here for the results.

All results have now been tabulated and appear below. These also appear on our web page at www.ncps.org.uk. (All entry forms and full results are held on file should any member wish to scrutinise them later).

Our judge on the night, Mr Jack Byatt from Romiley, demonstrated his very considerable experience by giving a positive assessment of every picture and finishing by 10.00 pm. - quite an achievement. As is so often the case in these competitions, pictures that are technically sound tend to attract a good mark whilst the more imaginative workers often fail to get their just deserts. Thankfully, this will not deter our more experienced members who will continue to strive for exciting images. We hope the less experienced will not change their style in order to appease a judge. Don't ever be deterred, by the occasional modest mark, from submitting pictures that please YOU! We all want to see them.

Let's look forward to another bumper entry of great pictures in Q2.

Tony Redford (Competition Secretary)

Creative Print Competition at Southport

On Monday 7th October Gordon and Joyce Robson, Dorothy Redford, Bill Chadband, Joyce Streets and Hugh took the NCPS entry to Southport for the Creative Print Competition. Apparently eight clubs had been invited but one was unable to meet the criterion of 11 creative prints from 11 different workers. Keith Suddaby had thought up the idea of the competition and Phil and Gwen Charnock had agreed to be the judges. We set off from Dorothy's house at 6pm and arrived at the venue at 7.20pm "Corners" had been prepared (by Southport) containing the print title and random number. We slipped the appropriate corners on our entries, handed them in and sat back in anticipation. Initially the prints were displayed, in order given, for us all to get a first impression of the entries. Having been displayed they were set on the ingenious metal stands that only Keith Suddaby knew how to erect. The judges were then given a few minutes to select the 11 prints which would exit in the first round. The judges put each print, in turn, on the display stand and commented upon why they had selected them, and more importantly, what modifications to the print they thought would have kept it in the competition a little longer. For the second round another 11 prints were selected for similar treatment; and so on until the final 11 were left, out of which a winning print was selected. Eleven prints seemed a curious number to use until we realised that Keith is a great football fan and can only think in terms of "the winning eleven". Inevitably should terms as the "B" team; the Conference league; the second division and the Premier division came during the seven rounds.

Our entries are listed below, with the round number at which they were selected for elimination.

Round. Title - Author
1. Angry Young Man - Jon Dixon
2. Statues at Candelaria - Gordon Robson
2. A Reflection on Modern Life - Richard Scaife
3. Arc Light - Place de la Concorde - Colin Pickles
3. Florida Blue - George Beaumont
4. River Swans - Dorothy Redford
5. Field Maple Sapling - Bill Chadband
5. Fog - Sheila Edwards
5. St Xavier Mission - Brian Turnbull
5. Paris Match - Geoff Robinson
6. Exodus - Tony Redford

The winners were Heswell with 60 points; 2nd SLIC (58 points); 3rd Southport (55 points). NCPS were 4th with 41 points; 5th S Liverpool, 6th Lytham, 7th St Helens. The more numerate reader will immediately understand that the points tally came from adding up the round numbers during which prints were eliminated. The system worked well and was very transparent. The judges noted that inevitably some personal preferences might colour their comments. They were not overwhelmed by the colour choice for The Angry Young Man nor the fact that an arm left the picture. They were disturbed by a pavement on the right hand side of the Statues at Candelaria. The orange block at the bottom of the Reflection on Modern life took their eye out of the picture. They would have preferred more separation between the two elements of Arc Light , Place de la Concorde. They felt Florida Blue lacked a focal point for the image, and felt more detail in the swans of River Swans would have improved the image. They felt the dark black image at the bottom right of Fog could be replaced by a more delicate image (eg a fence?) to improve the overall effect. They felt there was too much crammed into Paris Match. Exodus did well but the judges thought it was slightly over done on the Red and the addition of say some blue would have enabled it to do even better.

The accolade "best creative print in the competition" went to "Street performers - Arctic Explorers" by Sheila Goodyear of SLIC. The NCPS team heartily concurred with the decision. It was a good evening and Southport (and Keith Suddaby - its instigator) are to be congratulated on the concept and the smooth running of the event.
SLIC went away determined to do better next time. When Colin Pickles gets his computer we expect that we also will go up in the ratings!!

Bill Chadband

Our World of Photography

On 8th October Arthur Lomas and Dave Smith of Leek Camera Club introduced us to their world of photography with a series of 2-projector A-V shows which encompassed Close-ups; Landscapes; and a stunning set of Nature images. Though claiming to be amateurs at the game, it was hard to envisage how such shots as kingfisher birds emerging from the water with fish in their mouths had been obtained with simple hand-held camera systems (but equally hard to imagine how else they could have been obtained!). Our speakers emphasised the value of the hide in obtaining some of their close-up bird shots and their audience appreciated the relaxed, easy-going style of the presenters: the interlude when the slides appeared to jump out of sequence only added to the convivial atmosphere. Another great evening.

The Diaphanous Digital Discourse- Sunday 13th October

I rather liked this title, although Clive Haynes and Martin Addison (not being aware of their new title) stick to Photo-synthesis (spelt Foto-Synthesis!). Sheila Edwards, as syllabus secretary, instigated this great digital day and David Sharp found that the cheapest appropriate venue would be the Village Club, Bramhall. The Village Club is, of course, the home of Bramhall Photographic Society and we were pleased that Bramhall club were happy to come in with us to make it a joint event. Sixty people turned up on the day and in retrospect this was the optimum number, allowing us to cover our costs whilst providing everyone with a decent view.

The morning presentation took the form of the two presenters alternating in showing sets of their own prints to illustrate aspects of their work. This was a most successful approach, illustrating the various ways of "seeing" any particular subject. The authors brought their own of them putting up the other's set of prints whilst the latter described the motivation for doing the print set. The subject matter was as wide as is possible, varying from pattern images that had never seen a camera, to aspects of portraiture, landscape and still life. One memorable sequence was of deep space, foreign worlds, stars and space-ships; in reality close-ups of an old rusting fridge, found dumped in a quarry!!. Simple patterns and textures formed a large part of their work, with emphasis on either superimposed textures on a "normal" prints or, the value of the reflected (horizontal, or vertical flip!!) image being added to the original. The effects of multi-exposure of film, toning and had-tinting were all ilustrated.

For the afternoon session the chairs were turned through 90 degrees to face the screen on the stage. The computer and digital projector were used to show how some of the print images had evolved.

Inevitably, there is too much detail presented for anyone to recall more than a fraction once they get home. Hand-outs are therefore of great importance if attendees are to go away happy, not only having enjoyed a presentation but with a longer-lasting set of information for future use.

Eleven sets of hand-outs were provided covering Colour Cast correction, Gradient Map Toning, an Introduction to Colorizing and Duotones, adding Colour as a Texture, making 3-D pictures, adding a new sky whilst preserving detail, Pseudo Infra-red, sharpening with a High-pass filter, Pen and Ink Drawing techniques, dynamic swapping between tools and Undoing and Escaping from Selections. An excellent day out!

Bill Chadband