Last Wednesday evening was the first meeting of the new season for Canterbury Photographic Society. It was very well attended and members gave a warm welcome to several new faces who are considering becoming members.
Following a short EGM the main event of the evening was to judge the winner of the Summer Shoot Challenge. The Summer Shoots were organised by club member Wendy Kennett and attracted record numbers of members taking part this year at various locations. Wendy chose categories for the Summer Shoot Trophy Award and members had the opportunity to become Judges for just one night and vote for their favourite images. The mages were scattered across tables and demonstrated a huge variety of subjects. A shortlist was arrived at from over 100 images and those members were asked to give a brief insight about camera settings and editing techniques carried out on their successful images.
Chairman Dave Cornelius announced the results and last year's winner of the Trophy, Steve Silk, had the privilege of presenting it to his successor. Philip Wells was the overall winner with and focus stacked image of a 'Common Blue Butterfly' taken at Lydden Chalk Downs. Sarah Vinall's 'Ladybird' image and Wendy Kennett's 'Happy Abstract Accident' gained them joint second place and Steve Silk's Cafe Rouge image came third.
Members are looking forward to an exciting season of excellent speakers, league competitions and joint events with other camera clubs.
Members of CPS and visitors from other local camera clubs were inspired by the creative images that speaker Claire Gill shared with the group. Claire described how much she was influenced as a child by watching her father work as a Graphic Designer and having a very creative mother. Unafraid of turning her hand to most things, including DIY projects, Claire had experienced a wide range of careers before starting a family and then specialising in Digital Photomontage.
She gained a Masters Degree in Textiles, concentrating on knitted creations and for a while, had her own business designing knitted garments before spending time in Italy working for Alberta Ferretti and Valentino in the Fashion Design industry. On her return to England she lectured and also taught in a Secondary school before taking a break to raise her family. She was approached by Barbour to take part in an advertising campaign and experienced being in front of the camera wearing Barbour clothing and being photographed whilst taking her own images on Whitstable beach.
Claire became fascinated with the process of Digital Photomontage and studied examples of film photographers in the early 1900's who went to great lengths to create collages of images with often bizarre themes. She also explored the styles, colours and textures used by many of the great artists and she has successfully exhibited her own work in galleries and undertaken commissions.
Claire has developed a very unique style of her own based on coastal themes. She explained how flat light provided the best conditions for photographing multiple images in a single location. Claire found that using this approach the resulting collage, made up of objects in her photographs, would blend together in a more believable image. She prints many stages of her progress, cutting pieces out and rearranging them on paper before finally deciding on a successful composition which she then creates digitally. She hopes her images encourage the viewer to look more closely at all the various components that convey a surreal and atmospheric sense of place.
Members were also treated to an Audio Visual presentation of a selection of Claire's finished pieces and the evening culminated in a demonstration of some of the techniques she employs in her work.
Members were delighted to welcome KCPA Judge Ray Bridges and his wife to the meeting. Ray agreed to stand in at very short notice to judge the first Projected Digital Image League competition of the year. The competition was well supported with almost sixty entries. The first half of the evening was dedicated to judging the set subject which was a members suggestion 'Glass' and the members produced a variety of images on that theme. After a refreshment break Ray went on to judge the Open section where anything goes. His comments were fair and considered and members learned much from his suggestions of improvement.
It was great to see some of the clubs newer members achieving good results alongside the long standing members. In the set subject category new member Dave Horwood won with his image Amber Glass. Another new member, Chris Williamson gained Highly Commended for his image Glass Boat and Wendy Kennett gained Highly Commended for her image Cheers.
In the Open section Wendy Kennett won with her image Time Slips Away, George Aldridge, a long standing member, gained Highly Commended for Making Smoke and Wendy Kennett received Highly Commended for Magical Movement.
At the last meeting guest speaker, Ady Kerry, a photographer who now lives locally, had always been interested in photography and at the age of 18yrs he decided to the join the RAF as a photographer inspired by his passion for taking images of aircraft. He also spent some time working with the Army Intelligence corps training departments and developed his skills in black and white photography.
In 1989 he took the plunge and became a freelance photographer and now specialises in Sport, Journalistic images, Corporate work and private commissions.
He has become a very popular speaker at camera clubs and is always very generous sharing his knowledge. Members were intrigued to hear what Ady had to say about 'Slow Photography' considering his love of fast flying aircraft and sports photography.
Ady demonstrated the use of a wooden pinhole camera and old models of Pentax and Hasselblad film cameras. Hi impressed on us the emphasis on taking extreme care with composition, camera settings and the need to wait for that all important moment of action at a time when film and processing was so expensive. Unlike digital images it would not be practical to take several images and choose the best if you only had the capability of taking 12 images in total on a roll of film.
He showed us many examples of images taken in this way and felt that we could all benefit by adopting this method of approach when taking our own digital images rather than relying on burst modes and post processing skills to correct issues with our images.
Members were treated to a very entertaining and interactive presentation at their last meeting.
Pat Couder and Ian Marsh set themselves a photo challenge a couple of years ago after Pat had read various 'how to' topics in a Photography magazine that she had purchased. They set themselves the same challenge each week and the only rule was that the image had to be photographed in their own homes. They would then compare images with each other. The pair became more and more competitive in an effort to outdo each other and struggled at times to be creative with topics ranging from technology, cutlery, fabric and famous paintings. Pat emptied the contents of her fridge salad draw for the topic 'Green'. She sliced and arranged beans, broccoli , peas, lettuce and cucumber in an arrangement titled 'Five a day'. When 'Oil' was the chosen subject Ian struggled to find an oil that was dark enough to achieve the look he was after. He finally experimented by floating car engine oil in a dish of water and with the aid of Photoshop editing he transformed the oil into whale shapes in an underwater seascape.
Pat and Ian shared their efforts with their own London and Surrey based camera clubs and the talk was so successful they decided to go 'On Tour' sharing their images with other camera clubs.
Throughout the evening the pair demonstrated a variety of genres including macro, still life, portraiture and fantasy composites. They took turns to project their 'before and after' images and were very generous sharing their thought process and editing tips and techniques for each creation. Members were asked for a show of hands after each set of completed images were shown on screen side by side and Pat was the overall winner of the evening.
Experienced judge Keith Evans who has himself achieved Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, traveled from Tonbridge to critique the first Print competition of the season. Members submitted almost 60 images for Keith to comment on. The first half of the evening was dedicated to the set subject of 'Food'. There was a huge variety of images based on this theme ranging from still-life, food festival scenes and individual items of anything edible. Steve Silk was the winner with his still-life image 'Ploughman's Feast. Dave Cornelius and Steve Presnell were both awarded highly commended for Full English Breakfast and The Goods Shed respectively.
supported. Barry Amos and Wendy Kennett both scored top marks of 20 but there could only be one winner. Barry was the overall winner with his dramatic image Clouded Leopard Emerging from the Shadows. Wendy received Highly commended for her monochrome image Prepare to Dance and Pete Smith was also awarded Highly commended for his landscape image Afterglow over Llyn Padarn.
Last week was one of the busiest and most exciting weeks in the club's history. On Saturday the club held its Annual Photography Exhibition at St Peter's Methodist church hall. This was arranged to coincide with the Canterbury Festival and attracted many visitors and local folk. There was a public vote for the best in show which resulted in a tie between 4 members images, namely Lyn Gregory, Steve Silk, John Howard and Bill Grinney. The final decision on who will receive the trophy will be made by a visiting judge at the next meeting.
Also at the weekend, members Di Long and Wendy Kennett, travelled to Blackburn having spent considerable time over the past few months selecting a total of 26 mounted prints from 11 of the club's best photographers. CPS along with Beckenham camera club qualified last November at the Ross Cup competition to represent Kent at the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain's Annual inter-Club Print Championships. 37 clubs from all over Great Britain were represented at this prestigious event. An image by CPS member Stewart McKeown was awarded the Judges Collective Monochrome Gold medal and Trophy for his black and white print titled 'Hidden Truth' This was such an amazing achievement for Stewart, and CPS are delighted to have represented the Kent County Photographic Society so successfully.
CPS hosted a battle against Dover's Gateway members. 12 prints and 12 Digital images were submitted from each club and judged by Paul Adams. On this occasion Gateway were the overall winners scoring just 9 points ahead.