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

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

Monday 9/03 – Matt: Super moody supermoon. I ran an informal get together with Norths Photographic to shoot the supermoon. The cloud forecast looked great a week out, but as it neared things started to look worse. Thankfully on the night the conditions improved and we got almost 30 minutes of impacted visibility. I actually prefer a bit of cloud for moonrise; while it’s far more likely you won’t get the shot, if you do manage to get a gap it adds so much character to the images.

        
Sunday 24/06 Meredith’s Lightroom Outline was not about teaching you a program – this was about teaching you how to develop a workflow that will better enhance your photography and creative vision.  Intermediate – Advanced.
The group enjoyed Meredith’s enthusiasm and bubbly personality and colourful teaching.

Tuesday 8/05,  John Newton – Simplified explaination of the PSA Nature definition with Q & A.
The was a good amount of member participation which really made it work.
John brought along a large number prints and we were put to the test afterwards.
Members became judges on John’s prints and we did pretty well.

Intermediate Photoshop for members.

It was a good day on Saturday and I am looking forward to any on Lightroom… Robert

 

 

There was a lot of interest from new members / Beginner to intermediate for a workshop on
the following.
Laptops required loaded with Lightroom and Photoshop.
Bring your own images to work on and any replacement backgrounds or textures.
In brief basics covered for some who need guidance;
Photography Workflow.
Transferring images from camera to computer.
Importing images into Lightroom / Photoshop.
Quick start guide covers  the essentials that all Photoshop users should know up front & short cuts.
Moving onto Post-processing images.
The most powerful aspects of PS is the ability to edit in Layers.
Layers allow you to change certain aspects of your image without affecting anything you don’t
want changed.
With practice, photo editing experience will get easier and your photos will look better.

Thanks Christine for your time and sharing all your knowledge with the members who attended the workshop. Everyone would have gone away with inspiration and a more exciting insight into Photoshop. Your notes will certainly help them along their way to better images.
Thank you so much. Sue

 

 

Cancelled

Talk on working on files colour spaces & printing along with composition & preparing to print. Members bring Laptops.

Education: Learn mat board cutting  for your images with Christine and Sue.
Mat boards and cutters supplied.
Everyone needs mat boards for their images. Well worth attending.

Feedback:
The Mat Board Work Shop was really successful. 14 attended and Christine did an excellent job and although it’s not rocket science, it is quite a technical process. We had enough material to do the job. The ALTO’s 1501 Mat Board Cutter was used by Christine and seemed to be the best one around at the moment.  Everyone found it really helpful. – Sue