Diss & District Camera Club Blog
ARCHIVE of 2010-2011 Season
AGM 2011
17/05/11
A packed meeting of members attended the AGM, as the final club meeting of this 2010-2011 season. The AGM ran very efficiently with members very willing to volunteer for the roles needed to keep the club running smoothly in the coming 2011-2012 season.
The new club officers are as follows:
| Position | Name |
| Chairman | Alan Sarsby |
| Deputy Chairman | Mike Wraight |
| Treasurer | Mike Favager |
| Secretary | Krys Wakefield |
The new club committee is as follows:
| Position | Name |
| Programme Secretary | Margaret Chapman and Stephanie Franks |
| Web Editor | John Hutton |
| Membership Secretary | Sue Palmer |
| Exhibition Secretary | Sylvia Rogers and Vivian Turner |
The AGM minutes are now available, and emailed to all members.
Chairman's Choice:The Natural World
03/05/11
Another well-attended meeting, saw an abundance of Natural World photos
submitted. The members showed excellent restraint in respect of the avoidance of the use of PHOTOSHOP (as had been the Chairman's request!).
A fine array of landscapes, wildlife, country scenes, plants, flowers etc. featured in the subject matter. Each of the members individually presented their photos and commented on the subject and the techniques used to capture the moment.
Chairman's notices
Annual Exhibition - Redgrave & Lopham Fen
The exhibition dates are the 24th & 25th September and the 1st & 2nd October. We plan to exhibit A4 size prints, but need to think as a group about the mount sizes and colour, so that we can make a decision at the AGM on the 17th May. Also we need to finalise the categories at the AGM.
Summer Walks
Vivien received an enthusiastic response when she emailed members about the idea of Summer walks. At the meeting, two members volunteered to organise one walk, but there is still scope for anyone else who would like to organise additional walks.
Project: Rot & Decay
19/04/11
A good club turnout and a large number of photos were submitted for critique and judging on this topic. A new approach to judging was trialled; spreading the photos across several tables with each table of members picking their favourite 3 and providing a short written critique.
After 10 minutes, each batch of photos was moved on to the next table. This meant that everyone had a chance to view each photo at close quarters and for each table to attempt to agree on their top 3 - not always an easy feat! Such was the quality of the photos, and the spread of opinion that over 20+ photos made it through after all the judging had completed.
The 2
photos shown here
(taken by Vivien), were particularly popular with members.
Chairman's notices
Youth Expo
There
will be a Youth Expo at Diss Corn Hall on the 2nd of July 2011.
The club intends to have a stand at the exhibition to publicise
the Camera Club, and encourage new members. We plan to have a
slideshow showing a selection of Camera club members' photos
running on a PC screen. We are looking for some volunteers to
help Mike man the stand at periods during the day. The
exhibition runs from 10AM-4PM and we anticipate setting up the
stand at 9AM and clearing away by 5PM.
Green Spaces
There is a Diss-based project being run locally to promote the green spaces within Diss. If you have any photos of Diss 'green spaces' (e.g. the Park at the Mere etc.) that you think would help with this project, then please contact the Project Coordinator Sue Reeves on 643848.
Speed Dating Meets Photography!
18/02/11
Alan, Vivian, Charles and John H occupied a corner each of the meeting room, with their presentations as follows:
Camera-less Photography – John H.
Photo Critique - Vivien
Depth of field – Charles
Cropping and borders in Photoshop Elements – Alan
The members on the night formed 4 groups and took it in turns to move round the room (hence the speed dating analogy) so that everyone saw each of the 4 presentations (except the presenters!)
Everyone seemed to enjoy the evening on a broad breadth of subjects. Our thanks to Alan for getting us well organised.
Just a reminder to everyone that the Camera-less Photography exhibition, "SHADOW CATCHERS" is still on at the Victoria & Albert museum until February 20th. Also there is a lot of information and 5 short videos on the website at:
Cityscape
19/10/10
Hayley and John led a very entertaining critique evening on Cityscape photographs.
There were 20 or so photos submitted where, on occasions, the customary wide interpretations had been applied to the subject matter! Club members voted on their 1st and 2nd favourites using 2 tokens each and the most votes went to a stunning A3 print of a street scene in San Francisco.
The runner-up was a unusual photograph of Norwich
Forum with a full reflection of the church opposite, and also
mysteriously containing an image of a large clock face for good
measure!
Shoots - stretching the imagination
Well, for those who couldn’t come to the ‘Shoots’ evening, I’m sorry to tell you that you miss a real treat.
Having suggested the theme of Shoots, Mike Wraith volunteered to do the critique. His talents are far beyond photography. He’s a photographic comic. A cross between Jack Dee and Lee Mac! At one point he almost burst into song — Queen, I want to be free — since you ask.
His critique of the rule of thirds really came in for some, well, critique — especially from Peter’s circular image.
Some of the creative interpretations included:
a fairground rifle — one wonders how Hayley survived this candid shot in spite of §44 and the kind of characters one might encounter in a fairground
footballers shooting — yes, one has to stretch the theme a little, but John Y successfully did!
spring flowers, tree buds, and shoots — some where on the thirds, some were not on the thirds (but actually they were – it all depends on how one looks at the image!)
a blade of grass — between concrete slabs (and titled ‘I want to break free’ -- hence the singing!) it also prompted a separate discussion about spray mounting onto cardboard and negative cropping.
a ParaShoot – ok, it was a very creative interpretation of a low-flying umbrella. Well done, Peter
A lesser spotted woodpecker — it was being ‘shot’ with a camera! Hand held. No, not the camera, the woodpecker was hand-held being ringed by Lopham Fen staff.
It was a great night of banter and good humour. Thank you Mike W for a job well done.
Thanks also to those who volunteered to do things for next year’s programme, I’ll now get on and organize the things so it’s finalized and ready for the AGM.
Best wishes
Alan
Open Competition results
The Diss and District Camera Club kicked off its new season of photographic delights with an Open Subject competition. From the 48 entries submitted, the winners were selected using one-pence coins. Each member was lent five one-pence coins, and the member could mark their appreciation of a picture by placing the coins on the pictures of their choice. Alan Sarsby brought three £1 bags of pennies for the occasion, and amazingly, all the coins were returned!, Somehow, there was thrupence profit! Did someone contribute some ‘extra’ votes. Well, no. The local Post Office tells me that new one-pence coins have a different weight and thickness to the older coins, so there’s always going to be a discrepancy in a £1 bag of pennies. The profit of 3p was popped into a charity box.
Club members Viv Turner and Haley Moore led the critique. And during the critique members completed an improvement form using the Quality Composition and Impact scheme suggested by John Page.
The results:
First: Smoke Trails, Mike Phillips
Second: Island in the Loch – Alan Sarsby
Third: Brograve Mill – Paul King
Quality Composition and Impact
As a club, we have decided to try a review and continuous feedback using three categories. These are Quality, Composition, and Impact. To help us understand what those words meant for us, we ran a workshop-style event on 15 September 2009; the results are in the table below. And yes, there is some overlap!
We discovered there is a w-i-d-e range of interpretations for each category. And a wide range of views about the same image – some were under whelmed others wow’d; some impressed by techniques which others thought a gimmick. Each of us analyses an image in a different way. There is no single right or wrong for an image – except that we did recognize the difference between a snapshot and a photograph.
Hopefully, this helps us to give the feedback, and helps the volunteers who are presenting the critiques.
Members can download the finished document from the Resources Page.