How the world has changed. This Virus has caused more lifestyle change than a change of government, a world recession or terrorism, or all three combined. We are now Social distancing. I for one have not been out doing much photography. Gatherings of 20 or more are prohibited and so the club has been unable to meet since March. The committee has been using Face book messenger to plan our activities.
We have tried a variety of modalities to keep club members involved and engaged in the club activities. Judy Sara has been doing a fabulous job keeping us photographing with her “Keep Photographing” challenge on face book and Flickr. We have also experimented with facebook to conduct our “Social Documentary” competition in April. Helen has written a summary of this competition on the club web page. The Banners come from this competition. Di Gage at Hallet Cove, Suzie Smith’s New Holand Honeyeater and David Hancock’s social documentry of street life.
A lot of the other camera clubs had been using Zoom to conduct meetings. In May we gave Zoom a trial for our “Colour Black” competition and shortly after our workshop on “Product Photography”. We had planned a workshop on low key as a prelude to the “colour black” competition, which was available as a discussion on the face book account, and an article in Camera clips (This edition). The zoom meetings seem to have the advantage of allowing participation by the members, and seem to have been met with positive reviews. I am aware that not all members are at liberty to use zoom and so the club will continue to engage with our other social media platforms to allow a broad range of activities.
So that brings me to this edition of camera clips. We have the fore mentioned article on low key photography. It might also be interesting to look back a few years to the workshops on high key photography. It is my aim is to publish a written summary of every workshop run in the club.
Ray Goulter has been using his Covid isolation in order to write articles for Camera Clips. In this edition I have 2 articles. The first is on Carol Jemmers an under recognised but significant Australian photographer. The second is on developing slide film.
I have a small editorial note to add here. I have been scanning in slides from my parents slide set in order to prepare a photo montage for my Mum who died at Regis Burnside Nursing Home a month ago. I started off by taping the slides to a window. However a more reliable result could be attained with a cheap lightbox purchased from Spot light. I made some enquiries into buying slide scanners or having Hutt Street Photographics scan them professionally. However I was not convinced that all of their technology would give me a better result. A lot of commercial scanners use software called ICE to correct colour and remove dust and other artefacts. All of this however can be done in photoshop. Although I started with my macro lens I ended up preferring the result I got with my mobile phone. I found the macro lens tended to give me too narrow a depth of field and I was getting parts of the slides out of focus.
here is one of my mobile phone scans;
Thanks to all who sent condolences when my Mother died.
Over this time there has been another death. Reg Connolly was an active member of our club until about 2012, retiring because of health issues. I remember speaking to Reg and Heather at one of our workshops, talking about their start to photography when they were supporting an interest in one or was it both of their children. They attended a TAFE course and ended up in our club. I personally liked Reg’s direct style. He had a preference for natural landscapes. I have gone back and found some images from the archive and put them together with Heather’s words from the obituary. I hope that this tribute will stimulate some fond memories. My thanks to Heather for sending me the tribute from the service, and I extend my regards to her and her family at this time.
I hope that you are all well. Any one at a loose end I would encourage to follow Ray’s example and send me an article for our newsletter. Keep safe in these uncertain times. James
Contents –
- Low Key Photography.
- Carol Jerrems
- Reg Connolly
- Slide film developing and conversion to digital files
Camera Clips 