The year flies by… A couple of hurricanes later and I really need to write something for you guys.
We are still going strong with Feedback Friday and every time I learn something. This past Friday we had an awesome session with pictures by Vicki Payne. We had a presentation by Eric Breitenbach in the October 31 meeting about the TinType by Hipstamatic App for the iPhone. She already made some awesome tintypes and asked if these could be used in a Black & White show. Because all portions of the images were her own, we said “of course”. Tintype adds some noise or scratches or a texture to the image (if you want it to), but the image basically stays your own.
In August we had a great presentation by Susan Francis about Floral Still Life and Susan gracefully gave us a handout of her presentation (by the way Eric did that too!) Next year we will do a Floral Still Life challenge, so that we can practice what Susan preached. We will also try to organize a workshop with her for a hands-on experience.
Vinny Colucci was another great presenter we had this year. So helpful and again: we had an awesome handout from him as well. This helps if you are not able to attend the meeting.
We did try out our Zoom function in a meeting with a presentation from my best friend Ingrid, all the way from the Netherlands. She gave an overview of her journey in photography and showed us her fantastic pictures.
We can now have a Zoom presentation if it is hard to find a presenter. During the pandemic we had a presentation by New Zealand photographer Eva Polak; now we can introduce her to more of our members and show her impressionist photography.
Finding photographers who can teach us something – You Tube is full of them. You only have to type in the search bar what you are looking for and you have your pick. Two names that came my way the last couple of days are Brendan Williams and Steve Patterson from PS Essentials. I always love Photoshop Café with Colin Smith and two regulars on my list are Matt Kloskowski and Blake Rudis. This is all Photoshop and Lightroom. But post-processing is an integral part of photography (think Ansel Adams and his Zone system), therefor we can’t overlook that part.
Besides that, to come back to Feedback Friday, you can really improve your images by just a bit of post-processing.
At this beginning of November, I am thinking ahead to 2025. I will post the list of 10-day challenges shortly. We are starting to book presenters and thinking about the budget and activities.
I am rallying the troops to stay on another year, so that we can keep the Casements Camera Club running like a well-oiled machine and have a lot of fun doing that!
Till next time,