The first meeting of 2018

Meeting Report

A very Happy New Year to one and all.

I really should not be writing this report as this evenings activity was not for me. Why, I hear you cry? Simple, I do not ‘muck about’ with my images apart from cropping, sharpening, levels, highlights and shadows and clarity.

I do not use layers and am not artistic and therefore I try to take photographs of what I see before me, mainly birds and landscapes.

In a club like ours, you are never going to please all of the people all of the time, like life really.

Back to this evening, we started with Janet telling us about this year’s monthly challenge on Flickr, (she will be sending out the instructions by e-mail on how to join in shortly.)

David thought out the format for this club evening. We were teamed up with another member, quite some time ago, with whom we swapped an image; then both the author and his buddy both went to work improving, or altering, said image remembering if possible what he or she did to it to tell the audience this evening. Then we had a look at all three versions of each picture, firstly the original and then what the author did to change and enhance it and thirdly what the buddy had done. In practise we nearly always had yet another version done by David as well. This was because only ten people took part and we didn't have enough images to fill the evening.

In a discussion after we had seen all the images, David asked if everyone thought the event was worth repeating and the general feeling was that the lack of support was due to the exercise being so close to Christmas, when everyone is very busy with other things (ten is about a third of the membership). The majority of those present thought it worth repeating.

The people who took part I know found the evening both interesting and informative with discussions of the various filters and techniques used to achieve what were in some cases some very eye catching pictures. David should be thanked for his efforts in putting the evening together and running it, and Martin for assisting with the projection. It was a great pity that it was not supported with more entrants.

Submitted by Derek Grieve on