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.

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

Mike Martin from Bristol Photographic Society gave us a presentation entitled “It’s not what you take…..it’s what you make” which was both very enjoyable and highly informative.

Wth many years experience and an undiminished passion for photography, Mike outlined his overall approach which was based on three steps namely  1) Simplify and critique your own images; 2) Make the most of what you’ve got and 3) add Stuff. He then gave several example of his mantra in action, mainly using portrait images. His advanced processing skills, coupled with his acute attention to detail and an extensive image library allows him to discover the image that he visualises at the outset of the process.

Mike then showed the processes that featured in compiling his panel submission which achieved Associate membership of the Welsh Photographic Federation. After the interval, Mike shared some of his lockdown images before giving a practical demonstration of manipulating an architectural image using Photoshop. His imaginative approach and creativity will hopefully inspire us all to experiment further with our photographic endeavours.

As a follow up to an earlier Zoom presentation on Smartphone Photography last season, we held our own competition to allow members to practice some of the techniques and learnings gained from the presentation. The original image had to have been taken with a smartphone and a range of processing techniques could be applied thereafer as desired.

The competition attracted over 40 entries and was judged by Lorraine Robins from St Austell Camera Club. Lorraine gave a detailed description of her observations in each image as well as offering some ideas and approaches to consider. With the subject being “Open”, a range of images were submitted mainly covering landscapes and street photography, where the unimposing use of a phone can be readily exploited.

The winning image was a monochrome entitled “Lady on the Tube” by Adam Kowalczyk.