Welcome to the April edition of Camera Clips. This edition is given over to photographic composition. Composition is an element that photography has in common with other artistic endeavors like painting and drawing, flower arranging, architecture, magazine layout and typesetting. Initially photographers tried to replicate traditional forms from painting. However as photographers became more confident in the medium they realized the unique potential the camera has to create it’s own compositional forms. Eventually the experimental forms from photography began to influence painters, who adopted these new compositional structures.
We are fortunate to have a number of contributors to this edition. I started the ball rolling with a glossary of terms used to describe composition. David Douglas Martin remind us to keep it simple. Jo Tabe has given us a unique insight into her thinking process when she is doing landscape photography. Chris Schultz has written about his passion for finding new angles. Steve Wallace, a former teacher of photography, has loaned us a series of exercises that he used with his classes to help students develop competency in composition. He also has his top 10 tips in composition. Lastly Mark Pedlar and myself reflected on the differences between club competition judging and how the judges of international competition ascribe merit (National Geographic) . I know there are many things left unsaid. You might have to google ‘golden spiral’. Hopefully this smorgasbord of approaches to composition will stimulate you to new understandings and explore new ways to do things.
A few words of apology. Ray Goulter has sent me an excellent article on View Cameras. Unfortunately I have moved this into the next edition of Camera clips. I think that I might suggest an equipment theme for next month—old cameras—compact cameras—lenses. Please feel free to send me your ideas. I only have the 1 article at this stage. Also I am guilty of misquoting one of our contributors from last edition. You can find a correction to Richard Akroyd’s comments on page 3.
The banner this month comes from the “found objects” competition. You can see a summary of the competition and top images at the club website. Alberto has outdone himself by scooping most of the top images. Well done Alberto. However I chose a bird picture from the album prints section. Heather Connolly was very fortunate to find ‘beautiful firetails’ in the garden of her cottage on Kangaroo Island. She has been developing mastery of her new 400mm lens and has some excellent images to show for it. You will now find a number of Heather’s images on the “Birds SA” website. Well done Heather.
The club had a successful excursion to Marino rocks. I have included David Tulloch’s image of a fisherman on page 2. The fisherman commiserated that the seal in the surf was stealing all his fish. Chris Schultz laid down a challenge to those in attendance to take the best seal picture. The images are up on the club Flickr page. You will have to judge for yourself. The intention was to put the winning image on the webpage—perhaps as banner for the month. You can see many more of the images from the day on the club Flickr group. Unfortunately Yvonne has had to resign from the role of excursion secretary. In her absence, Graham Field has put up his hand to co-ordinate future club excursions for 2014, so feel free to communicate your ideas to Graham.
That’s about it from me. Unfortunately I missed the “Back to Basics” workshop, but trust that it went well. I was impressed by the effort that went into planning the session. There is more news from the club that you can find in the excellent correspondence from Ashley Hoff and Julie Goulter who have been disseminating their respective e-mail bulletins as Club President and Secretary. I trust that you enjoy this edition.
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Camera Clips 