23rd March 2021 - Competition - Theme - 'Scapes'

This evening over 40 of us Zoomed in on this month's competition themed 'Scapes'.

There were over 70 images for our judge, Richard Houghton, to consider. Richard explained that he would be looking for what he considered the 5 essential elements in an image namely: exposure, focus, composition, impact and story telling plus of course his personal taste.

We saw a good variety of different examples of 'Scapes' and Richard offered helpful suggestions and comments he felt might improve some of our images and praised those he felt required little or no improvement.

Some of the high scoring images can be seen below:

From Members Class:

FJORDS by Les Thwaites 20/20

WATER COLOURS by Pam Rutty 20/20

ASHNESS BRIDGE by Daphne Lingwood 19/20

FOGGY FROSTY MORNING by Pam Rutty 19/20

BORNEO SUNSET by Les Thwaites 18/20

THE APPROACHING STORM by Ann Barber 18/20

From Members Advanced class:

HIGH AND DRY by Christine Frost 20/20

PATH LEADING TO HAPPISBURGH LIGHTHOUSE by Diana Graham 20/20

THE TWELVE APOSTLES by Jan Murphy 20/20

FIVE FINGER STRAND by Liz Akers 19/20

SELJALANDSFOSS by Paul Radden 19/20

ST PAULS SKYLINE by Tony Smith 19/20

TULIP FIELDS by David Ashfield 19/20

WHITE POCKET by Paul Radden 19/20

LADYBOWER BRIDGE by Roy Scrivener 18/20

MAGPIE MINE by Roy Scrivener 18/20

THE OLD CUSTOM HOUSE KING'S LYNN by Graham Frost 18/20

UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS by Di Jackson 18/20

Tuesday 9th March – Presentation by Astrid McGechan entitled "Feel the Land – Photography and Emotion"

Astrid McGechan, LRPS and Light & Land leader, came along to share her thoughts of Photography and Emotion. She started off by telling us a little about herself and how she came into photography, illustrating her story with her images. 

Continuing she shared why and how to capture emotion, including quotes from many other creatives, including playing some music. It seems that images which were important to her tended to show beauty, harmony and calm and these frequently related to how other's felt about her images. She told many stories along the way and gave a few suggestions as to why black and white was important to be able to convey emotion.

In the second half Astrid explained some of the techniques she used when making her images, including multiple exposures, ICM, using textures, and even defacing an image. All were ably illustrated by her own images and stories she told about them.

It was a totally different type of presentation given by Astrid McGechan that made us consider images in a different way, perhaps best summed up be her phase, "Don't take pictures of what it looks like but take pictures for how it makes you feel".

Many positive comments from members afterwards and increased activity on her FB page!!

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 – "Macro and Close-up Nature Photography"–a talk by Daniel Bridge

 It was good to welcome back Daniel Bridge to WDPC and we enjoyed his relaxed but very informative style of presentation. He explained the effect of using different lenses, the value of the relative different camera positions, the need to understand the behaviour of your subject and the basics of composition. 

We have a wide range of abilities in the club and I am sure most members were able to take something away from his presentation which was illustrated with many of his images.

Daniel was only too willing to answer members questions and I am sure there will be some folks who will be keen to attend one of Daniel's workshops when they resume. For details please check out his web site: https://www.danielbridge.co.uk