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Feb 2023 Hello and Welcome

We start back at NORTHS Tuesday February 14, 2023

To all members, 
I hope you all had a great Xmas and New year. I’m looking forward to this coming year in photography with you all.  An email will be sent to you in the next few days inviting you to re-join the club and at the same time, the club calendar will be available for you to look at. We will mix the year with interesting guest speaker nights and with good solid competition nights with the points accumulating towards the end of year awards. It isn’t easy to keep producing high quality images every month, but the challenge definitely improves our photography.

NORTHS PHOTOGRAPHIC ANNUAL AWARDS 2022

Tuesday 29/11  NORTHS

Members, spouses, partners, and friends gathered for drinks,  hot canapes, a cheese platter, and gourmet sandwiches to celebrate the end of the year Annual Awards.

Judges:  John and Leanne Alessi.

Congratulations to the winners and participants.

Members best images are presented to be recognised and awarded for excellence in photography.
Images must have been entered in competitions during the year 2022.
Members must attend the event if submitting entries.

Results:

People’s Choice:  Hemant Kogekar

Members achievements based on accumulated point scores during the year.
Announcement of Winners, first, second and third placings in A Grade and B Grade.

Sep 2022 : Premiere of a documentary of the legendary photographer, Steve McCurry

McCurry  :  The Pursuit of Colour

…. is an intimate portrait of the life and work of celebrated photographer Steve McCurry. He opens up about the stories behind his iconic images
and reflects on the defining moments of his extraordinary life and forty-year career.

Steve McCurry in attendance for the premier and engages in a post-film Q&A with renowned Journalist, Jenny Brockie. 

Steve McCurry is most renowned for his 1984 photo, Afghan Girl which appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in the June 1985 issue.
It shows a young girl of about 12 years of age living as a refugee from the Afghan war in Pakistan. The image became symbolic not only of the war but also of the difficulties of refugees worldwide. The photograph is considered the most recognisable of any published by the magazine.

Sharbat Gula / Steve McCurry

Members attended enjoyed the event.

July 2022 : Adrian Whear : Bangladesh

A Melbourne street photographer.  Adrian travelled to Bangladesh for two weeks in 2019.
He documented his travel with thought provoking, artistic storytelling images which made an absolute stunning presentation.
His visits to some very interesting places and experiences,  included the Port of Dhaka with the manual unloading of coal from ships by both men and women in baskets on their heads, the smoky and hot environment of foundries, the Cox Bazaar with its fishermen, chillies and rice drying methods,
brick making and the dangerous stone quarries. Train travel in Bangladesh is really an experience his images showed people clambering onto the roofs and leaping from train to train, crazy!!
Thanks Adrian, a brilliant presentation.

May 2022 : Charli Savage, a beautiful creative worker

Charli has a passion for taking photos and turning them into surreal photographic art that stretches the realms of reality and pushes the boundaries of imagination. She says I follow my curiosity into the unknown and hope to inspire you to do the same.
Those who attended the workshop enjoyed the experience.

April 2022 Competition Open

Malcolm Fackender an excellent judge.  Gives useful, honest assessments in order to separate good images from the not so good images and is able to
explain his decisions to the members.

Let’s do a little re-cap  :   Practice Makes Perfect and gets better photography:

As you learn digital photography and acquire skills and techniques, they need to be regularly practiced in order for them to become entrenched in your mind. They should become second nature to you.

Exercises to make practicing more pleasant.

Go on a photo walk, get into the outdoors. There will be more subjects, more variety to the images you can create.
Set yourself a goal as to what you want to achieve and then work toward it.  The outdoors makes you feel good, you’ll get good exercise and great images.

Shoot one subject in many different ways, this may seem difficult, but once you start it gets easier.
Find something that you like or that appeals to you, then attempt to take many photos of it from different angles and in different ways. This really pushes you to the limits but it gets you thinking outside the box and trying new things. 

Take the alphabet challenge, you can do this anywhere–indoors or outdoors. What you must do with this little challenge is take the alphabet or a series of letters in the alphabet and shoot objects that either begin with the letter or look like the letter. This task gets you thinking and, of course, practicing your photography.

The object of these little exercises is to give you ideas so that you’ll take more photos.
One of the biggest hindrances for new photographers is deciding what to shoot.
If you are not taking photos, you aren’t practicing.
And practice makes perfect.

Author: Wayne Turner

March 2022 Competition Nature

Dennis Jones gave good comments aimed on the new PSA definition of Nature.

Let’s do a little re-cap  :     Establish your photographic style:

Photographic style is not a destination, it’s the journey itself. You don’t suddenly develop style. It’s the result of your experiences, an extension of who you are and how you see the world. It’s what you evoke in people viewing your work that makes you unique. Photographic style is not copying someone else’s style, but it’s about making your photography an extension of yourself. In other words, don’t just copy the masters, try to be one!


Discover what you’re passionate about. It’s easy to see which photographers are passionate about their work because it shows in many images
they capture. Enjoy your photography for the same reason. It will shine through.

Try new and different things to photograph subjects that challenge you.
Every new challenge adds more skills and more experiences.

Don’t be afraid to fail by taking bad photographs. Overcoming failures by taking better photographs only makes you a better photographer.

Assign yourself projects that you have not attempted before, especially those assignments that you’ve never seen done by others before.

Be free to express yourself. Ignore the set rules. (Set by whom?)

Be inspired. Attend workshops and seminars. Look at photography blogs, magazines, and books.

Act as your own critic. Look at your own collection of shots and ask yourself how they could be improved.
Is your work exciting to you or just another bird photo?

Share your work with your friends and family or go one stage further and sign up with photo web forums.
Attend local meet up groups. Treat all negative feedback as a means to learn.
Treat positive feedback as being on the right track.

Take a camera wherever you go. That one perfect shot is waiting to be captured by you.

Specialise on particular genre of photography but do it differently.

Decide on a medium. Do you want to photograph in black and white only? HDR images? Pick one and be consistent —and I mean 90 percent of the time. There’s nothing worse that browsing through someone’s portfolio to see color, black and white, and some HDR.
It cries out that you haven’t developed a style yet.

Try to describe your style to others. Do you capture the moment, freeze action, tell a story or do you aspire to being a photo journalist?
This will help to define your style by telling others.

Eventually, you will come to realise what your style really is.
One word of caution: don’t over-process your images.
Keep it simple and your work will stand the test of time.

Author: Geordie Parkin

Feb 2022: Hello and Welcome

We are excited to be back and encourage as many members as possible to attend our physical meetings to share the social interaction and make new friends.

Your committee have a mix of presenters via zoom and some for attending at the club. Competitions will be at the club unless otherwise notified.

Let’s do a little re-cap  :   Why would you like to be a part of the photography club?

Photography clubs usually organise monthly competitions on a certain skill or genre.
Competitions are a great way to learn and improve.
Not only will you receive critiques from the judges but also other camera club members.
Judges are not required to make friends or to maintain egos.

Images are stories:

Look at any image, and can you see immediately what stories it is telling.

We are looking at inspiring and image power, that is the power to draw the viewer into the story, so they begin adding his or her own story, emotions, feelings, sensibilities to what has been captured or created.

Images can stimulate the creative processes. It is not just the line, shades, and tones; it is the story that spurs this inspiration.

Author: Dennis Nikols