March 2015

Welcome to Camera Clips for March 2015.

The banner this month comes from the “blue” competition run in February. You can see the top scoring images from this competition on the club web page. Chris has also written a short piece on the competition.

Perry Phillips entered three images in the newly formed novice competition. The pictures of these strange blue granules really caught my eye. I felt that the standard in the novice competition had shot from nothing to an alarmingly high level. Well done Perry.

I should also mention that Sam Savage and Julie Goulter have written a summary of the presentation by Paul Hughes. He gave a photographic presentation on his journey along the renowned pilgrim route known as Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. You can find this article on the club web page.

I have a loose theme for this edition of Camera clips – Troubleshooting. It’s amazing how much you learn from other peoples mistakes. This arose out of several conversations I have had in the preceeding weeks. Chris Shultz was bemoaning the problem of poorly sized entries into the digital competition. Graham Field and Ron Hassan were troubled at a firework display by getting a bum lead on which camera settings to use. Helen Whitford was telling me about the early days of her flash photography when half the image was black. The guy at the photo shop knew instantly what the problem was. I have asked each of these people to write me a short article. They are not all ready yet, but I will post them when they come to hand. I wondered what I had to add to this little collection, and then remembered the difficulty I was having getting a nice sharp photo of the moon. Half the problem was getting the correct exposure. I have included my thoughts on this topic.

Thinking about the moon I have written a whimsical piece on lunar landscape photography. Perhaps not an outing we are likely to be holding for a few years yet. We did however have an outing to Goolwa and I have had a lot of response from those attending. Be sure to check out the pictures in my photo essay of the Goolwa excursion. At this point I have a confession to make. I am guilty of tweeking. I come clean in a small outlier page from the Goolwa page.

How many images do you think you will take in your lifetime? What will those images tell about you? Perhaps another way to think about our photography. Read the opinion piece.

Perhaps the coup de grace of this edition of Camera clips is Russell Brown, a Melbourne based professional photographer. Russell has just written a book on artistic use of photoshop. He approached the club to promote his book. I wrote back to Russell and he agreed to answer a few questions in an interview. Russell was generous with his time and gracious in his responses. He was very approachable and I enjoyed perusing through the material he provided. You can download the introductory chapter from his book (Which I recommend that you do). I also recommend that you read the interview. If you are hooked, maybe you might be interested in purchasing the book.