It was good to see so many people at Sue Bishop’spresentation although the home supporters were almost outnumbered by visitors. We welcomed some new faces and friends from Steyning and Bognor Camera Clubs –and even Mrs Co-Chairman was there. Storrington members are clearly keen to miss the worst of the winter – I know of members in Costa Rica, South Africa and Florida at the moment and there may be more elsewhere – this is why we were a bit thin on the ground.
Anyway we were treated to a superb evening of photographs and photographic wisdom from this very experienced and widely travelled lecturer. The first half was devoted to landscape photography and Sue explained very clearly all those principles which should be second nature but which tend to drift away when the camera is raised to the eye. In fact Sue thinks even this is bad practice – she is an enthusiast for tripods even if they are deemed unnecessary by shutter speed. Sue’s theory is that having gone to the trouble of carrying a tripod, erecting it and attaching the camera more care will then be taken with composition and exposure considerations. The proof of this was the quality of images shown – some really super shots.
The second half was devoted to flower photography for which Sue is renowned and about which she has published books. Although much can be achieved with standard and telephoto lenses most of Sue’s flower photography involves the use of one macro lens – a venerable 105mm Nikon item which predates vibration reduction – others are available! She also pointed out how useful the macro mode of compact cameras can be in this sort of work.
You have to get down and dirty when photographing flowers in the wild or even in the garden and, of course, every effort must be taken to leave the subject matter as you found it. I got a “Paddington Bear hard stare” when I asked Sue if she took secateurs in her camera bag! Sometimes though, when gardens are bare, subject matter comes from the florist. Here a good tip was to buy several specimens of the chosen subject and use the best in the photograph and the rest for the background to ensure colour harmony – there are many more than forty shades of green.
In fact backgrounds loom large in flower photography when they shouldn’t – that gentle, evenly coloured, out of focus look is surprisingly difficult to pull off even with fast lenses at maximum aperture. And most times a piece of coloured card behind the subject simply won’t cut it. Sue also touched on the use of reflectors and on using focus stacking saying that it is often not necessary to take a monumental number of shots to achieve greater depth of field than possible with a single image – often just a few will suffice.
So a first class evening enjoyed by all and thanks to Sue for putting it all across so clearly. All we need to do now is not to flap around like wet hens making loads of exposures of a great landscape but slow down, reach for the tripod and take the best image. And be as captivated by the background as by the floral specimen itself – you will not take a good flower picture unless you are.