It’s the end of the year and time to look back on a very strange year indeed.
But the Casements Camera Club managed to have two exhibits, 12 challenges, 5 field trips, 8 regular Zoom meetings (with 2 interviews and one Masterclass in Flower Photography in November) and 4 board meetings. A new feature is Feedback Friday, also via Zoom where members talk about pictures and suggest improvements on already marvelous images. There were 9 Feedback Friday meetings. Besides that, members can participate in competitions of F3C. Affiliate membership of F3C is free for Casements Camera Club members.
A little more about the Feedback Friday events: critiquing someone else’s images is a tricky affair: you have to be respectful of the photographer’s feelings. We do build an image up and don’t break it down and everybody’s opinion matters… I have seen critiquing sessions from Mike Browne, Blake Rudis, Frans Lanting and Essdras Suarez and each and everyone of these fantastic photographers did it differently! But they all encouraged the photographers to do better and to improve their skill set. And that is what I would like to come out of these Feedback Friday sessions. It’s a bit of work for me, but I like doing it. What we also do is show the improved image in the next session, so that you get a comparison. This is the image before…. ta da… and this is the image after fiddling with it. Unfortunately this can only be done in a post-processing program and some of our members still don’t like to do that. I think it is a necessary step in your photography. Look at Ansel Adams: he even wrote a number of books on post-processing and his zone system on tonal qualities in an image is still used today.
We’re not out of the woods yet as we leave 2020 in the dust, and the first months of 2021 will be no different. But there is light at the end of the tunnel…
HAPPY, HEALTHY and a CREATIVE NEW YEAR everybody!!
Till the next time,
Ans