We have our first informal tuition evening tonight at The Angel where you will be able to learn more about the functions of your camera and how to use its features to improve your images.
Non-members and guests especially welcomed and the evening starts at 7.30 pm in the ballroom (1st floor) at The Angel Hotel, 47 High Street, Royal Wootton Bassett. There is free parking on the High Street and in the Sainsburys car park behind the hotel.
Come along with your camera
Our fourth and final competition round for the Mayor’s Cup for digital projected images was judged by John Taylor from the North West Bristol Camera Club using Zoom Meeting. A healthy attendance gathered at the meeting venue with those unable to attend joining the meeting by Zoom
The Open competition was judged first and the winning entry was from Nigel Walkley and entitled “Oh dear 1” which was a captivating portrait type shot of a deer.
The Power competition proved more challenging to meet the brief with multiple interpretations existing in the dictionary but many not transferring easily into a powerful image. The winning entry was submitted by Rob Slade entiltled “Geothermal power station” which was taken in Iceland.
The only remaining competition of the 2021/22 season is the Annual Competition in June which will feature both prints and digital projected images.
After several failed attempts, we finally managed to get Chris Pocock to our club to present to us. Chris is a local person who was born and bred in Wiltshire and has a great love for his home county. The ‘Wiltshire Project’ idea came about whilst chatting with a colleague over a drink and developed into a challenge between Chris and his colleague – Eva to see who could take the best hundred pictures of Wiltshire. Unfortunately Eva wasn’t able to co-present with Chris as she had returned to her home in Slovakia so we never got her insights into the challenges presented.
After detailed research, and the purchase of many Ordnance Survey maps, Chris and Eva selected a number of locations to visit and take photographs capturing local life and scenery. Each location was visited only once and often the whole day and into the evening was spent exploring the nooks and crannies of the location, trying to optimise subjects and conditions for photography.
The project was completed prior to the first lockdown which provided the opportunity to spend time selecting the images and compiling the presentation which also included interesting facts about the county itself as well as the locations visited.
Throughout the presentation, the locations selected and their images, some of which were taken from a light aircraft, both Chris and Eva revealed a personal insight into the parts of the county that are special to them.
Our tabletop photography evening had a definite water theme across all its activities and no-one got wet in the process. Jon organised a simple but effective set to photograph water droplets, which was the most challenging task of the evening. But it proved to be both enjoyable and rewarding with several participants trying their skills at firing the flash at the optimum time to freeze the action at the critical moment.
Martin dusted down some of his lighting equipment and set up a profesional display to photograph soap bubbles. Apart from mixing a soap solution that allowed the bubbles to remain stable for sufficient time to capture their ever changing patterns and colours, getting a highly diffused lighting source was the key to success. A speedlight, reflector umbrell and large white reflector proved key to success.
Water droplet refraction images were attempted with a simple set up using empty beer cans to support a pane of glass, positioned above a computer tablet to generate the master image. The key skill here was to produce discreet spherical droplets that would act like a miniature lens and retain their shape. Eventually we resorted to using pure glycerin which did the trick
It was pleasing to see some fresh faces attend the meeting and join in with the activities.
Our annual battle with Cricklade Camera Club entered its fourth year and was hosted at The Town Hall Annexe in Cricklade. Each Club entered 30 Open subject images and Peter Markwick, a judge from the Southern Counties Photographic Federation had the challenging task of critiquing and scoring each image.
Club members who made the journey on a cold and rainy night were rewarded with a victory for RWBCC by 555 points versus 543.5 points. It was a high scoring evening by the judge and seven of our images were awarded the maximum score of 20 points, which is a great achievement and congratulations to those involved.
So , after four battles with Cricklade CC we stand at 2 wins apiece and rivalries will be renewed in Spring 2023 and hosted by us.
Our AGM will be held this coming Tuesday on February 15th in the Angel Hotel ballroom and commence at 7.30 pm.
The main part of the agenda is the important task of electing the Club’s Committee members for the year ahead to ensure the smooth transition and functioning of the club. Members are requested to attend the meeting in person wherever possible and offer their inputs.
Following the AGM we will explore some practical activities that can be held at our Tabletop Photography meeting on March 15th and make preparations to ensure that any items of equipment are available to facilitate our activities.
Our third and penultimate competition for the Mayor’s Cup for projected images was judged on Zoom by Bruce Hobbs from St. Agnes Photographic Club. The competition comprised two categories: an “Open” section and a “Water” themed section which was viewed first.
The judge gave both thoughtful and constructive feedback and noted the challenge of comparing those images that had a strong immediate impact with those that yielded more meaning the longer they were viewed. He added to the tension of the evening by holding back his winning selections until the end of each judging session.
The wining Water themed image was “Ripples” by Robert Slade and the winning Open image was ” Jay in sunbeam” by Dave Garmont.
Ripples
Jay in Sunbeam
Oue next meeting will be the Annual General Meeting on February 15th and held in The Angel Hotel ballroom.
Pete Colley explained the process and techniques to follow in order to obtain the best results when photographing different aspects of the night sky and illustrated his talk with his own impressive images. He included lots of practical information that will have prompted many of us to experiment with some astro-photography.
He started by explaining how he had prepared to obtain an image of the moon over his local town jetty and the range information used to ensure that the height and positioning were optimised. For moonscapes, using a 400mm+ lens and focus stacking images gives more detail and a partial moon, as opposed to a full moon, exposes the moon’s surface detail better.
Star trails are best captured with a 14-20mm lens combining about 14 exposures at 5 minute intervals. Time lapse techniques are also very effective.
Essential kit includes a sturdy tripod, remote control, spare battery and red head torch. This can extend to an intervalometer or equivalent phone app. Shoot in RAW and practice camera adjustments in the dark. Lens misting can be prevented by using a dew strap and/or a kagool over the camera.
Planning and preparation are key to improving results and many factors need to be considered including the darkness of the sky, light pollution and visible lights at your chosen location along with detailed weather conditions and phase of the moon. Fortunately there are now some very useful apps to help with this – e.g. clearoutside.com and Photographers Ephemeris.
There are endless subjects in the sky to observe and photograph from shooting stars, aurorae, noctilucent cloud, zodiacal light, comets and the Milky Way to the major galaxies. Stacking hundreds of shots using specialist software improves the signal to noise ratio and hugely improves image quality.
Whilst all of the above is possible using reasonably common photographic equipment, more specialised items such as Equatorial Tracking Mounts, Refractor Telescopes and Reflector Telescopes will take you to the next level and he recommended some reasonably priced items to start the journey with. In summary, an intriguing and informative talk that has opened our eyes to what can be observed when you do look skyward.
We engaged in our first Battle of the 2021/22 season which was against Swindon Photographic Society and Highworth Camera Club and hosted by Swindon PS. This was an unscheduled event due to the previous combatants having been unable to take part due to the impact of covid upon their Clubs activities.
Each Club submitted 20 Open subject images and the challenging task of judging the entries went to Tony Oliver from Salisbury Camera Club. After the first half in which 10 images from each Club were viewed randomly and scored out of 20 points, RWB lay comfortably in second place. After the remaining images were judged the final scores were;1st Swindon PS 337 points; 2nd RWBCC 320 points and 3rd Highworth CC 317 points. So a closely fought and enjoyable evening that included some very high quality images.
Finally congratulations to Jon Bastin from RWBCC who achieved a maximum score for his image ” Wiltshire hare without a care”.
Our next meeting on January 18th is a Zoom presentation of Photographing the Night Sky by Pete Colley