Our old friend Derek Forss visited us again, this time at a hurriedly rearranged evening at Pulborough Village Hall as our normal venue was suffering with a serious water leak and could not be used.
As usual, Derek showed us stunning images in two formats, prints before the break and AVs afterwards. I have been privilegedto know Derek for quite a number of years having seen at least two slide presentations at Bookham CC at least 25 years ago. I have also been on a workshop at Earnley Concourse south of Chichester and a walking holiday in Yorkshire with HF holidays both of which Derek led.
Derek has been a professional landscape photographer for quite a long time now and his work has appeared in many magazines and published works which are household names.
He really knows his photography inside out and throughout his presentation he was giving us very helpful instruction on what to do to get the best results. He said that the first requirement is to really know your camera, computer and printer and how to get the results you want from them. He also told us the things that he always does such as under exposing by a 1/3 or 2/3rds of a stop to stop the highlights blowing out and to enrich the colours. (just to confuse you, you will find other photographers, Martin Tomes amongst them, who will tell you quite rightly that there is a huge amount of valuable data gathered at the right hand end of your histogram which it is not a good idea to miss, and therefore you should not underexpose!) If you check your histogram and there is a tall peak right at the light end, then you know that you have blown highlights. It is' horses for courses'. I have done what Derek advises for years and it gives me what I want.
Derek also does not use Auto White Balance, but sets the camera according to the conditions and showed us examples of the difference that this makes. He also never uses a tripod (or Monopod) and again showed us examples of shots taken hand held inside churches with exposure times as low as 1/4 sec which are sharp. Remember, Derek is a professional with years of experience and the same thing would not happen for you and me. This is coupled with the fact that he uses the lowest ISO, typically 100 and to a maximum of 400.
Derek shoots in Raw which of course gives him the opportunity to correct things in the computer, but you should aim to get it right in the camera at the time of the exposure.
Derek also emphasized his use OS maps to check the direction of the light when he arrives at his site and of course the weather forecast is also important. Derek has his images on several OS map covers.
The AV presentation after the break was very good with some excellent fades all done with Powerpoint. These were synchronised with some classical music which is Derek's other passion. I caught sight of him conducting the music as we were watching!
Derek is of course sponsored by Olympus Cameras and he was waxing lyrical about their new Pen models which are much smaller cameras with interchangeable lenses and which can take the full size four thirds range of lenses with the use of an adaptor. He said how much easier they were to carry up mountains than their bigger cousins.
If you want to find out more tips on Derek's photography they are available on his website www.derekforss.com. Also you can find out about his courses at www.hfholidays.co.uk