The Two Jonathans

Two of our newer members combined to give us a home-grown evening on Tuesday 24th February.

Jonathan Bawden took us on a trip to Bolivia, Why go to Bolivia? Well, it was a mysterious place far, far away and near the Andes. Jon was aware that few people knew exactly where Bol;ivia was and so he spent a while at the front of the room with the map identifying it's position in South America, and telling us a little about its history (apparently it wasn't always land-locked!). He wouldn't don the colourful shawl or peasant's hat, though, claiming that they were woman's gear. Rachel sat firmly at the back! She was indispensable to the trip, however since she spoke Spanish, and Jon didn't!

We were shown great pictures of the Andes, the cities, the primitive (who said dangerous?) electrical wiring of showers, the Blessing of the Lorries and cars, do-it yourself landing stages, and treated to scary stories of coach maintenance.

After tea, Jon Dixon regaled us with a variety of images nearer to home. Jon was interested in Pattern pictures, and common sights seen from unusual angles. At one stage the audience (or at least, Colin Pickles) entered with gusto into the puzzle picture competition shouting out whenever he recognised a building or feature. The presentation might have been entitled "New perspectives on Manchester" until John moved on to Sheffield, and then left the country for Boston USA, before re-entering the country (Manchester) under cover of darkness. Apparently, at night, the fountains in Piccadilly gardens change colour on a regular basis.

An entertaining evening of contrasting halves, much appreciated by the audience.

Thank you Jon,

and Thank you Jon!

The New Digital Projector

Most members will be aware that we have been successful in our application for a grant to finance a Digital Projector, Lap top computer and associated software. We are now in a position to actively plan the beginners digital course proposed in the application. Members may be interested in reading the preamble to our application, some of which is reproduced below.

PREAMBLE TO APPLICATION

Photography is turning Digital, with sales of digital cameras now exceeding those of film cameras. Photographic Societies have become increasingly digitally orientated and are building up an impressive expertise in all aspects of this art. North Cheshire Photographic Society (NCPS) is one of the many clubs in the Lancashire and Cheshire Union of photographic societies (L&CPU) to have warmly embraced the opportunities offered by this new technology; and has scored many successes in competitions for creative image making.

Amongst our newer and potential members a desire has been expressed for more structured tuition to help them build up their expertise. Apart from a thorough understanding of their own cameras this includes solving printing problems and mastering the software which tends to be bundled with their equipment. Overwhelmingly this software is one of the many versions of the industry standard Adobe Photoshop.

NCPS members, (many of whom fall into the category of teachers, lecturers, or members of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and/or Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB)) have shown a willingness to assist the NCPS in putting on a series of workshop tutorials aimed specifically at the needs of these potential new members. We have seen a need to actively encourage, and instruct, members of the local community in both the craft of digital photography and the art of creative digital imaging. We see this as an ever-growing trend in photography that will enable many people to enjoy the satisfaction to be gained from this new art form.

To this end we propose to run a series of Workshops in the local Community centre in Poynton, interspersed with a series of more advanced tutorials as part of the Society syllabus, these to be advertised in the local information office, press and libraries. The workshops and tutorials will be non-exclusive; people of all ethnic origins and all ages will be welcomed. We have noted that not only the young but the newly retired are equally attracted to this new form of photography as a creative Art which involves them in the general community and which also gets them out into the countryside looking for new images. Physical disability is not generally a barrier to the hobby; one of our active members and a recent President of the Society is wheel-chair bound and actively champions the needs of the disabled.

For the proposed group work our project is dependent upon acquiring a suitable digital projector and laptop (ie portable) computer to drive the projector. We also require separate licensed software to legally run the system.. Club funds are insufficient to provide this initial outlay, given the other running costs of our Society, and this is why we turn to the “Awards for All” scheme for support.

Although the equipment is primarily required to support our stated project, it will additionally be used for events involving the local community (e.g. during our Annual Exhibition week)....

The small room in the Civic Hall (to which we have historically been directed for the first Tuesday of each month) has always been an unsatisfactory option for many members and attendance on these evenings has usually been low. The Community Centre, up the road, has a "cinema" room (with a permanent screen set up) and comfortable chairs and is therefore well suited to our purpose.

The lecturers and teachers amongst us are well aware that the best way to intimately master a subject is to attempt to teach it to others. Those of our members fairly new to the digital technology should obviously gain from the proposed course. But equally our more experienced members will have much to gain from endeavouring to explain in a clear and understandable way the subjects they have been asked to impart. And we hope that, besides raising our profile as a photographic society, the new initiative will further increase our membership.

The Digital Forum III (2nd March)

Tony Redford persuaded the distributors of the Optima Digital Projector (used for our Annual Exhibition) to again loan us the projector in order that members could give more consideration to its value to the Society.

Tony briefly described the machine, and the ease with which it apparently worked with Tony's Lap-top computer. The EzPro 757 is a single-chip top-of-the-range DLP (see December Focus) micro portable projector with a contrast ratio of 1800:1 a 2300 lumens output. It is quiet (32dB) and of small size ( for easy transport) and comes with a 3-year guarantee. It is a XGA system with resolution 1024x768 pixels.

We had seen it working in the large hall of the Civic centre, and members were impressed with its clarity in the small room with the back hall lights on. The consensus was that we should go ahead and purchase this machine.

Dorothy Redford demonstrated the steps she had taken to produce her winning print at the recent Annual Exhibition.

Tony then ran the "slide-show" he had quickly put together using the Pictures-To-Exe program now widely available on the Web.

[Editor's Note:

The editor has recently purchased for £5 a tutorial CD by Norman Piper (norman@buryuk.f9.co.uk) It is a well-thought-out introduction to the above program. It contains a try-out program Pictures-to-exe, which can be turned into the full program by paying, via the Internet the $25 fee). The editor recommends that the club purchase, from Norman, a copy of his tutorial. {Individual members may well wish to purchase their own copy}

The Third Quarterly Competition

At short notice David Hemstock of Bramhall Club stepped in to act as our Judge. David was a popular choice, unassuming as a photographer, open about the fact that judging is a very subjective matter, and frank about the basic impossibility of fairly comparing a good landscape with, say, a good portrait. He dealt briskly, but consistently, with the 50 prints and finished in good time for the tea break. David suggested that entries should all be anonymous, containing title and number on the back ,but not the name of the author, to avoid bias. Because many of the entries had been in our Annual Exhibition, he had seen them before. Most of these entries had the author's name stuck on the back! He did his best to be impartial - and it was no surprise to find that the pecking order for this third quarterly differed from that in the annual exhibition. In reading out the results after the competition, John Coles could not avoid noting (in his friendly way) that it was Tony Redford who had suggested to John that David be approached!!

Results....

On Line Paper

The 16th March was the opportunity for Chris Burslem of "On Line Paper Co" to tell us about his company and his wares. Sceptics might wonder how anyone could talk for a whole evening about paper, but Chris managed in a light-hearted way.

He usually carried his lap-top with him, but confessed that he was on his third machine in three years. No, it was not a case of regularly updating to be assured of the latest version, but rather his lap-tops had a habit of dis-appearing. He even had a video showing one walking off with its new owner!

The advent of digital photography had been a real release for Chris. He was happy never to spend another minute in the darkroom.. He thanked Barrie Thomas for his early help and advice on the many aspects of digital reproduction.

Having spent some time talking about the "green-ness" of paper production in Europe and America, Chris was happy to deal with the green tints in some of Gordon's reproductions. He even correctly guessed the paper to which Gordon had referred. A great variety of prints on the large range of available papers were put on the front tables for member's inspection, together with Samples of Fine Art Papers for purchase at discounted price.

Home Entertainment

Instead of a tentative competition on Tuesday 23rd March we had some home grown entertainment.

Joyce Streets produced prints made from the fine art paper in the Hahnemuhle Sample Pack provided by Chris Burslem last week.. She had had some difficulty with the thickest 310 & 335g/sqm, but members queried whether she had correctly set the paper thickness lever on her printer.

Gordon Robson showed a range of coloured and Black & white prints made on several samples of the paper. He had not experienced Joyce's problems but had felt the need to compensate for the yellow tint of the papers (using +4 magenta)

For the remainder of the session before tea Jon Allanson gave us a feast of his prints. Estimates of the total varied from 60 to 75 prints. Jon showed a sequence of Matterhorn images, concentrating on flowers or reflections. He noted that he had passed through a white-mount stage. He moved from Switzerland to France, commenting that higher up the mountains Black & white images were preferable. He illustrated his several visits to Venice including the inevitable Gondolas, Gondoliers, and Carnival Masks. He discussed the difficulty of getting good Carnival shots with the inevitably cluttered background, It was not surprising that such shots were usually tight in on the subject to avoid this background clutter.

After the tea break an earnest gentleman in a waistcoat appeared and informed us that the year was about 1880. Mr Gladstone had won an election; Queen Victoria was on the throne and it was forty years since Mr Daguerre had invented photography. The Gentleman produced a fine mahogany photographic machine, explaining that it was one of the latest constructions with extending bellows, a lens which could be raised or lowered, a back containing a ground glass screen (which could be moved in or out relative to the lens), and a set of double sided glass plates (slides, he called them) on which a chemical emulsion could be laid. When he mentioned that some of us might still be using the wet collodion process Colin Pickles was observed to turn a bright red.

Seeing that he had his audience's full attention the Gentleman produced a more advanced photographic machine with tapering bellows, which could fold up even smaller than the first. But his "piece de resistance" was a massive machine eighteen inches square and two inches thick, which opened out into a giant camera with plates greater than 12 inches square. Producing a large blanket the Gentleman persuaded our President to get under the blanket with him for a considerable length of time. Apparently the Gentleman was demonstrating his 20 inch objective. Judging from the whoops of joy emanating from beneath the blanket, the lens was a good one.

The Gentleman produced a wooden extending structure and claimed that three of them could together be called a tripod, which, given a suitable platform, could be used to support his photographic 'Camera'

President Joyce Streets thanked all contributors, including the gentleman with whom she had shared the blanket, for an enjoyable evening with a difference. Joyce later explained that she was grooming the gentleman to be the next President of the Society.

Landscapes Through my Camera Eye

This was the title of Jon Baker's presentation on Tuesday 30th March.

Jon emphasised throughout his talk that photography was a hobby to be enjoyed and not a source of worry as to whether or not the competition judge would like the results. Underlying his comments was the theme that if one enjoyed taking the images and strived to satisfy one-self, then one's photography would improve, as would the judge's comments.

Through his slides Jon took us on a tour of N.Wales, the Lake District, Scotland and Switzerland. Seeing an image again usually recalled to Jon the time and place of image capture, but if it did not, his wife Sue was there to assist.

After the tea break Jon turned to his prints, another tour de force through the same localities. Jon was particularly taken by grasses and by the early morning, or late evening lighting of his subjects. He ended his presentation by showing us his successful MFIAP panel of 20 prints. His subject was the quarries of Rhosydd and Cwm Orthin and 'Who will remember the Quarrymen' who worked and lived there. The set of prints were all of a piece, printed by inkjet on course linen paper (obtained from Chris Burslem), together describing the whole site in a wonderful golden glow. Our members keenly perused them at the end of Jon's presentation - another marvellous evening.

2004 saw us renew our visits to Wales to meet our friends from the Dysynni CC for a Print and Slide battle. The venue on this occasion was the Plas Maenan Hotel in the Conway Valley. A continent of ten from NCPS stayed in the hotel on the Friday and Saturday nights whilst another four attended the pre-battle dinner. Seven Dysynni members joined us for the dinner, as did the judge and her husband.

As the weekend was principally a social one it was agreed that our entries should come from those members attending (with every NCPS participant providing at least one print, or slide for the event). Judge Barbara Cope from Llandudno announced that she had only recently taken up judging. Not surprisingly she did not meet universal approbation, but she was pleasant and friendly and NCPS could not complain with her overall verdict as we won the print battle by 159 points to 127; and the slide battle by 136 to 124 points. This win was the happy conclusion to a very pleasant evening.

The Hotel proved to be most satisfactory with good food and rooms, particularly the large room we were assigned for the competition. Apparently it took a while for some members to acclimatise to the colder Welsh weather!

The rather dull light and generally overcast weather was a challenge to the keen photographers. Folk variously visited Llanwryst, Llandudno and the Great Orme, and Conway. A few brave souls walked the Welsh Hills, and most paid a visit to the beautiful Bodnant Gardens where the daffodils provided a fine display.

Overall it was a happy and successful weekend so why did I come away with a vague feeling of disappointment?

Tuesday 13th April was the opportunity for members to impress with their choice of prints and slides for the set themes of Shadows and/or Reflections. Sadly the editor was in Scotland for the event and no member has yet volunteered to tell him what the evening was like. Any reflections, anyone? Or do you all prefer to hide in the shadows?

As one might expect, Barry gave us a polished and entertaining evening on a variety of aspects related to digital manipulation of images. Having gone through the inevitable phase of trying out all the filters available in Photoshop, Barry thought photographers were returning to the kinds of manipulation originally seen in the Darkroom.. He could foresee an increasing use of the Digital projector for "slide-shows from the CD" and spoke highly of the cheap but effective Pictures-to-Exe program.. He was also enthralled by the "Flash" animation program, which appeared to have been developed for Web page animations" and which produced high quality moving pictures with low memory requirements (50Kbyte to 500Kbyte) using the .PNG compression. He also demonstrated animations using .JPG compressions saying that he felt setting the compression degree to 6 was a good compromise.

Barry took a variety of images and went through the process of "improving" them with Photoshop. Recognising that he was moving at too fast a pace for everyone to keep up he noted that he had CD tutorials for sale which covered the points he was making, and more.

Barry's Lap-top for the occasion was a massive floor standing computer with four hard discs and Terra-bytes of memory. He used both his key board (for short-cut instructions and an A3 sized Wacom tablet. He noted that he was accustomed to a twin screen display, whereby the two halves of the tablet (L & R) corresponded to the two screens. A memorable evening and we were delighted to see great support from neighbouring Bramhall Club.

This was the final meeting before the AGM on 11th May. It was established that most officers of the Society were willing to continue in post if re-elected and Richard Scaife would be the next President.

A particular problem was the Treasurer post. Through a variety of circumstances (moving house to Crewe, changing job, and their imminent marriage) Estelle had prematurely relinquished the job of Treasurer, and President Joyce Streets had undertaken much of the work. More recently David Sharp had agreed to try and get the books in order before the AGM. There had been no rush of offers to take on the job. It was suggested that the treasurer tasks had grown under David's term, as he had been willing to book the rooms, replenish the tea and biscuit stocks etc and that it might be necessary to re-allocate these subsidiary jobs to encourage offers for the Treasurer post. Two particular aspects might be discouraging prospective treasurers. These were the Annual exhibition finances (much of which Gordon and Joyce Robson had been doing this year) and the collecting of the weekly subs. It was suggested that, if necessary, these two jobs could be separately allocated.

The annual subscription (£26 standard, £20 Senior Citizens, £11 Juniors) had not been raised for some time. The committee were anxious not to discourage new members by raising the annual subscription. Instead, they propose an increase of the weekly subs to 50p per night to offset the gradual rise in costs to the Society. [ Some members have expressed irritation at having to remember the loose change to pay, when signing in - Others have suggested that it ought to be possible for these members to pay their weekly subs as a lump sum in advance if they so wish. Assuming that these members attended for 20 out of the 30 meetings 20 x 30p = £6 under the present system.. If the new subscription is agreed then 20 x 50p = £10; or a maximum of £15 if all meetings are attended!]

Richard Scaife circulated the proposed syllabus for next session. All but one of the Tuesday evenings were now settled.

Tony Redford circulated a draft of the proposed Digital Course, to be run on the 1st Tuesday of the month. He emphasised that it was subject to amendment as more detailed work was done, and as he received further feedback.. It was agreed that his draft document should be published in Focus to facilitate feedback from members. It was also agreed that Tony should purchase a Universal card reader, Mouse, and Wacom Tablet for use on the Course.

Our President informs us that we have been successful in our grant bid. We are now in a position to proceed with the beginners digital course proposed in the application. More details in the next edition of Focus.

Result

A very poorly attended night saw an interesting competition judged by a former professional newspaper photographer who confessed his prejudices at the start. He announced that he did not like natural history or architecture but preferred people so no prizes for birds on sticks!.

Eleven clubs were represented. NCPS lost no slides in the first round, but we lost Gerald's "Spring Blossom", Tony's "Autumn Glow" and Dorothy's "Cranes Silhouette" in round two. Again we lost none in round 3 but lost Gordon's "Industrial Co-existence" in round 4. South Manchester had a similar view in the competition which fooled the judge into thinking that they were taken by the same photographer on the same day! Brian's" Fruit Seller" went out in Round 5 followed by Frank's slide entitled Textures and Curves.

The contest ended with three clubs - Chapel, Hyde and South Manchester all on 24 points - but after much confusion and a Mrs Merton style heated debate, Hyde were declared the winners as they had the highest scoring slide of the three tied clubs. 85 Group had 22 points, Bramhall 18, NCPS 17, Oldham 16, Romiley 13, Ashton 8 with Davyhulme and Altrincham bringing up the rear. No results print outs were available (much muttering that it isn't like this at North Cheshire!) but at least Margery won a bottle of wine in the raffle!

Having been awarded a National Lottery Grant under the "Awards for All" Scheme, NCPS have acquired a Digital Projector, Laptop Computer and the necessary software to facilitate the running of a course aimed at encouraging our own members, as well as members of the local community, to make the most of their digital cameras and to pursue this new aspect of photography as a rewarding and fascinating hobby.

Our approach will be to firstly offer basic technical advice on taking, storing and printing pictures digitally, and secondly to inspire the imagination by exploring various image manipulation programmes (in particular Adobe Photoshop) thereby demonstrating how pictures can be not only improved, but transformed into veritable works of art.

As well as satisfying the demands of our existing members who have been requesting more digital coverage on the syllabus, we expect these sessions will persuade prospective members to join the Society in order to benefit from the competitions, lectures and social events which have been part of our successful format over the years.

The course will take the form of a Digital Forum held on the first Tuesday throughout the syllabus year and held in the Cinema Room of the Poynton Community Centre on Park Lane. The course will be led mainly by our own members, with external speakers being invited to expand on certain specific topics.

It is envisaged that the first half of the evenings will follow a structured syllabus (see below) with a less formal second half, to include members’ pictures with the techniques and/or problems encountered.

Throughout, the accent will be on having “FUN with Photoshop” by learning to use the programme confidently, as a means of firstly improving the captured image, and then possibly transforming it, by giving free reign to the imagination. This is our hobby!