Prints Round 4

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Results of Round 4 of the print league were as follows:

The colour section was won by Kieron Keller with his "Owl Portait". In second place was "Getting Ready" by Helen Cullens, and third place went to Steve Else with "Wet Daffodil"

A couple of familiar names in the Mono section, with Helen this time taking 1st place with "Yorkshire tree", and Kieron  in 2nd this time with "Big Dave". Steve Ballard was in 3rd with "Going Out"

Filming insects and birds

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On 6th March, we were treated some fascinating insights into the scientific (rather than the usual artistic) uses of photography. Dr Richard Bomphrey from the Royal Veterinary College presented a talk on “Filming insects and birds: videography as a starting point for science and technology”.

Mainly using high speed cameras to capture motion, but then applying some pretty serious mathematical modelling, Richard and his colleagues are able to study the wing motions of insects and birds, in order to understand different aspects of the subject such as efficiency, speed, landing and take off. The knowledge of this is useful not only in the understanding of the animal kingdom, but also has potential applications to human flight.

Some of the highlights for me were :
A video showing how dragonfly wings beat alternately front and rear, except at the point of take off.
Images and videos showing the square of vortices around insects and planes.
Insight into some of the simple sounding but clever techniques for capturing the required information.

And of course playing with the high speed camera and some party poppers!

2018 Schools Competition

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On Feb 6th, we held our annual Schools Competition, in conjunction with the St Albans Museums and Galleries trust, and sponsored by Taylor Walton solictors. This competition is open to sixth forms and colleges in the local area and gives pupils the opportunity to have their images judged by an independent judge, and also have the opportunity to win some rather nice prizes.

This year there were almost 70 entries from 5 establishments. Thanks to all entrants, judges and supporters.

The images are now being prepared for an exhibition in St Albans Cathedral which will open on 10th March for one week.

Two two winning images shown here are "Steel wool car" by Callum Bowden from Oaklands College, and "Sky high" by Michaella Buer from Marlborough school. Many congratulations to both.

 

Further highly commended images below were "Enlighten" by Michaella Buer (again!), and "Shadows of the morning" by Skye Adams from Sandringham school.

Human and Animal portraits

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An evening of prints and projected images of portraits, both Animal and Human, gave us a wide range of images for what on paper sounds a fairly narrow definition.

Many thanks to Julia Cleaver for judging and being flexible to work around the projector problems!

In the prints section, winners were Geoff Clinton and Kieron Keller with "Caracal Cat" and "Mr Grumpy" respectively.

In the projected images, the winners were  Chris Williams and Chris  Bennett with "Locked and Loaded" and "Thoughtful" respectively.

Prints Round 3

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The third round of this years print league resulted as follows:

Colour prints was won by Geoff Clinton with "Arctic tern", Chris Bennett was second with "Splashdown" and third pace was Steve Ballard with "Waiting for mum".

In the mono section, Helen Cullens's "On Chesil Beach" ran out winner, with "St Dunstans Church" from Kieron Keller in second and third was taken by Chris Dundon-Smith with "Lioness portrait".

Projected Images Round 3

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A bumper set of images this time round. This week's winning entry was Red sea wreck by Peter Tatton - well done!. Second and Third places went to Gareth Richards with Cathedral of Capitalism and Standing Stones by Allan Parker respectively. Thanks to this week's judge Amanda Wright.

Trophy Evening

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We had one of our regular competition sets last Tuesday 16th January for The Albert Beale Trophy and the Carter Cup. The Albert Beale Trophy was won by Geoff Clinton (again) - he could have left the trophy at home! The topic was coloured reflections as usual and Geoff won with his picture "St Pauls". The Carter Cup was an open Triptych and was won by Helen Cullens with her picture "Tunnel".

The competitions were very well supported with 75 entries and we had our largest audience of the season enjoying a fine evening judged by Chris Sergeant. Well done to Geoff and Helen.

Landscapes and Flowers

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This week we had two more talks from club members.

Colin McInnes took us through some of his own takes on making good landscapes images, with sections on filters, preparation, choosing your viewpoint and the repeated refrain of “use a tripod”. He then closed out with a selection of images based around some favourite locations and discussed “when is a landscape not a landscape?”.

Helen Cullens “gardener first, photographer second” shared some lovely images of flowers, and let us in on some of here own secret techniques. Ever modest, Helen made it all sound very easy, although she did admit to the number of hours it can take to cut around an outline of a flower.

Print Leagues Round 2

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The second round of the Colour and Mono print leagues was held this week and judged by Mark Buckley-Sharp.

In the colour section the weeks winner was another new member Gareth Edmeades with a mganificient cityscape "Over the Thames to St. Paul's". Brian Doble took second with "Homing in on Herb Robert" and third was Geoff Clinton with "Red Hot Tuba Player".

Chris Bennett picked up another win in the Mono section with "Chileshe", the places going to Derek Nash with "Misty Morn" and Helen Cullens with "Remembrance".

Patagonia & Steam trains

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Thanks to Chris Bennett for this weeks update.

Tuesday 21st was like so many games of football: a game of two very contrasting halves.

In the first, we were transported to southern Patagonia and Chile. Richard Craddock talked about the benefit(?) of doing an eight hour trek to get a good view of the Fitzroy mountain range, and showed us some superb landscape images of the mountains and glaciers.

In the second half, we returned firmly to the UK but with many puffs of smoke as Ian Duffield and Peter Duncan talked about their lifelong interest in steam trains. They showed us images from across the whole of the UK of trains, workshops and re-enactors. Moody skies and lovely low evening light featured heavily as well as the trains.