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| Last weekend’s L&CPU Print & PDI Challenges went well for
us, 5th in both cases. I think we learned valuable lessons in selecting what
to submit and (perhaps even more so) managing the competition entry. Thank
you very much indeed to those of you who loaned us prints or submitted PDIs.
Saturday was also the L&CPU AGM and something very important happened which many of us have been looking forward to; Christine Widdall became president of the L&CPU. You all know Christine at Crewe as an excellent judge and someone with the presence and character to carry the role very well indeed – but she is also keen to reform some things and I am sure that her presidency will be a landmark for the L&CPU. See www.lcpu.org.uk She will be in the area on Monday when she opens the Nantwich CC Exhibition at Nantwich Museum. Do go and look at their exhibition sometime in the next few weeks. Nantwich has some excellent workers and they are enjoying a big increase in membership just as we are. There are several other good things coming along. Look at the EVENTS page on the L&CPU website. On events – I hope you have all secured the tickets from Ian for Mid-Cheshire’s evening with Ben Hall the week after next. |
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This week was – Portrait Evening |
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Clearly hugely enjoyed by your good selves – these things usually don’t have a very positive end and only a few of you remained when I thanked Ian, Sharon, Dave and Martin for their help. I must apologise for forgetting to thank the models Thomas and Emma. Many of you appeared on the other side of the camera too and I hope we see some good images as a result of last night. |
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| Next Week – Jim Harrison Trophy | ||||
| Is the Jim Harrison Trophy – our Annual PDI Competition. I
was sorry to learn that Jim’s daughter Jean will not be here because of a
family bereavement but it will still be a great occasion. I will have
an important presentation to make too. We have just under 100 images
so Tillman Kleinhans, our judge for the evening, will not have too much of a
rush to get through the images. |
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Future Dates |
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Print Leagues |
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The totals have now been recalculated. The final results are: |
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| COLOUR Martin McGing - WINNER Patrick Whalley 2nd Paul Hill 3rd Bob Bradshaw 4th Ian Whiston 5th Peter Robinson 6= Ken Dickenson 6= John Royle 6= Steven Pepper 9th Les Simpson10th |
MONOCHROME Carol Cotter WINNER Paul Hill 2nd John Royle 3rd Simon Cotter 3rd Sharon Barton 5th Ken Dickenson 6th Les Simpson 7th |
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John |
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L&CPU Print & PDI Challenges 27-02-10 |
| We did really well on Saturday - 5th in both events. Congratulations to you all - even if your images were not used we really appreciate the support you gave us. The most successful images were Bob Bradshaw's BLUE TAILED DAMSELFLY and Carol's SAIL AWAY - our only 13s. My other favourite of Carol's DANCING THROUGH TIME bombed (Philistines!), but our strength was in the fact that the vast majority of our images scored 11 or 12. |
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This week was – Battle with Sandbach |
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We won! 325 to 312. A nice relaxed evening!! |
| Next Week is – Portrait Evening |
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Bring your cameras!! Last year’s was a great evening. Thanks to Ian & Sharon especially for arranging it again. |
| John 26th February 2010 |
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This Week was Third Print League Competition |
| Tony Pioli ARPS ABPE was the judge and was full of advice about how the pictures could be improved. |
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Next week is Battle with Sandbach & L&CPU Slide Portfolio |
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Battle with Sandbach on Wednesday 24th at Sandbach Library 7.30 pm |
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The format will be as usual; 10 prints and 10 PDIs. The judge will be Norman Thompson – President of the L&CPU (until the weekend!). Crewe PS was one of the only two clubs that Norman didn’t manage to attend during his 2 years presidency. Our fault entirely!!! |
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L&CPU Slide Portfolio |
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We don’t know how long the “cardboard framed little darlings” will survive in the digital age. The 2010 L&CPU Annual will feature a “projected image” section which will permit both slides and PDIs. Certainly what we have here are a collection of remarkable images from the 2009 Annual. |
| John Royle 19th February 2010 |
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This Week was North Cheshire Photographic Society Inter-Clubs Competitions |
| On Wednesday night we did well (10th out of 23) Last night we did REALLY well - 4th! (out of 27) Pictures of the first night and results for that night's print comp are on the L&CPU website. http://www.lcpu.org/lcpu/news.php Last nights results may not appear at first because of some technical changes which are happening to the website, so they are attached. Yes, FOURTH. The story is that we lost Man of Florence and Onlooker in the first round, Goldfinch made round 2, but Urban Directions hung on to 3. The great success was Ian's Bee-eater which hung on in there until the final - so gaining 6 points! Quite a few members made the trip to Poynton and were rewarded with a great evening. Next year might be even more special since it is NCPS 60th Anniversary (counting its years as Hazel Grove PS). Now one of the Unions leading clubs I look to NCPS as a benchmark for CREWE PS in many ways. They suffered a schism in the 80s which lead to the formation of the 85 Group (guess when this happened!) - it was all over whether or not they should allow "trade processing" of prints - the pioneers of 85 didn't want it. Sounds all so petty now and long forgotten in many ways - with some of NCPS's leading workers, like Geoff Robinson belonging to both clubs! However the issue has parallels in the digital/film debate except that the switch to digital is so compelling it just washed the film diehards clean away from club photography. Which reminds me, must get the two films processed which have been sitting on our hallway cabinet since well before Christmas! See you all next Thursday for the THIRD PRINT LEAGUE. |
| Cheers, John |
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This Week was The Bebington Salon Of Photography |
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Thanks to Bob Dennis APAGB CPAGB BPE3* and Gordon for a wonderful presentation of this National Competition. It was good to have 5 of our members with work featured in it; Ken Dickenson, Paul Hill, Darren Carter, Ian Whiston and John Royle. It was on the cards that this showing may be the last one but I was pleased to be able to announce that there will be one in 2011 – though a little later in the year. |
| John 4th February 2010 |
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This Week was The L&CPU Monochrome Folio P |
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With commentary by Barry Colquhoun (pronounced ca-houn) and members of Lytham St Annes PS. |
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Next week is The Bebington Salon |
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An AV of the famous BPE national exhibition. This may be the last time it is on the road. |
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Our PDI League competition is over. |
| The winner is BOB BROWN (112 points) In second place we have BOB BRADSHAW (107) Third are STEPHEN TALBOT (104) and PAUL HILL (104) Fifth, and only one mark down are MARTIN McGING and IAN WHISTON. Then only two marks separate the rest of the TOP TEN, with PATRICK WHALLEY 7th (101), SIMON COTTER 8th and DOT JOHNSON and myself sharing 9th place. The full results are available, including every title and mark. I started from scratch again to try and ensure that I got it right because I knew after PDI 2 that it would be very close. Now do know which three you will enter in the final? 40 of you have entered one or more League comps so we could have 120 images. That is a lot but we will stick with it because they have all been judged before so shorter comments would do. The ANNUAL PDI is on 11th March with HAND –IN on 25th February. YOU ONLY NEED SUBMIT RE-WORKED IMAGES. Otherwise just tell me what you would like to put in. REMEMBER that JUDGING is SUBJECTIVE. A 20 is no gurantee of success next time just as a 12 doesn’t mean you are doomed if you enter it again. Be true to yourself and BELIEVE in your work! |
| Finally, finally. We talked briefly about HDR.
High Dynamic Range. It is a way of getting more illumination of the darker
areas of your pictures. Done subtly it can enhance a picture considerably
but overdone it is just disastrous. The website Ken Last sent me a note of was http://hdrcreme.com |
| John 29th January 2010 |
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This Week Was – 3rd League PDI Competition |
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"At First Light" Highest Scoring General Image by Peter Bainbridge
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"Blue Tailed Damselfly" Highest Scoring Nature Image by Bob Bradshaw
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| Tremaine Cornish took over as judge from Daryl
Giles who was injured in a car crash before Christmas. You will be pleased
to know that his injuries were not too serious but they have forced his to
take a few weeks rest.
Tremaine's enthusiasm came over very well and he had some good tips for adding that extra bit of appeal to your pictures. Do remember that you can tweak them if you wish before the ANNUAL! |
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The highest marks were… (the first number is just the showing order): |
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Congratulations to Peter Bainbridge for his first win and to Bob Bradshaw for an absolutely perfect damselfly shot. Bill Crichton did very well in his first competition too. |
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| I have worked out the League positions but
would like to check them through carefully once more as there is only 5
marks separating the 3rd to 10th places for example and last time I double
checked, after PDI 2, I did find an error of one mark on Simon’s total – so
it does happen! So, here are the top ten places, subject to a second check when I am less tired! |
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LEAGUE TOTALS – PROVISIONAL Bob Brown – 112 - First Bob Bradshaw – 107 – Second Paul Hill – 104 - 3 Stephen Talbot – 104 - 3 Ian Whiston – 103 - 5 Martin McGing- 103 - 5 Patrick Whalley- 101 - 7 Simon Cotter- 100- 8 Dot Johnson – 99 - 9 John Royle- 99- 9
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| So, congratulations to Bob and Bob for such a
successful season and a clear lead. Well done Paul Hill and a special
mention for Stephen Talbot because he is the highest placed member who
entered mainly general subject pictures. |
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| John 22nd January 2010 |
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This Week Was – Ian Whiston – East African Wildlife Digital Odyssey |
| What a great start to the year! Ian transported us to the
heat of Africa so effectively that we all forgot about the cold outside. The transportation was effective because Ian set the scene so well and peppered his talk with little snippets of information about animal behaviour (including human) which put us right there with him. Species after species rolled off the tongue and appeared on the screen in an astonishing number of excellent shots. Ian’s enthusiasm and knowledge completed the spell. We are very used to watching tropical wildlife on our TVs but the programmes are often tightly focussed on one species. Ian’s broader picture I think gave a much better idea of what it is actually like to be there. Thank you Ian for a wonderful evening. |
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Next Week - PDI III 2010 – our third League Competition. |
| Thanks you all for getting the images to me on time. So far
only the Post Office has let us down in that I posted the CD to the judge on
Monday and I have yet to hear that it has arrived! There were 95 pictures from 33 entrants. The quality has remained high – quite an achievement when you think that we now ask for 27 new images from you each year if you are to make a full entry.
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Great British Cup |
| The bad weather was responsible for the fact that not
enough Natural History judges turned up to run that part of the event. Some
improvisation allowed the Open and Small Clubs categories to be completed. We did better, achieving a few places higher than last time. The full story and results are on the L&CPU website. Here are the results for the individual images that we entered:- |
| PAGB OPEN GB CUP FULL CLUB SCORES CREWE 34th |
| 02_CW57E_Onlooker 12 Crewe PS Carol Cotter 05_CW57E_Follow My Leader 12 Crewe PS Ken Dickenson 09_CW57E_Horse Whisperer 11 Crewe PS Dot Johnson 12_CW57E_Millenium Bridge 11 Crewe PS Darren Carter 04_CW57E_Confrontation 10 Crewe PS Ken Dickenson 14_CW57E_Reeling In Dinner 10 Crewe PS Bob Bradshaw 17_CW57E_Urban Directions 10 Crewe PS Steven Pepper 18_CW57E_Ynys Llanddwyn 10 Crewe PS Simon Cotter 03_CW57E_Calla Lily 9 Crewe PS Mary Davies 06_CW57E_At The Back 9 Crewe PS Tom Seaton 07_CW57E_Heads Up! 9 Crewe PS Ian Whiston 13_CW57E_Moray Firth Sunset 9 Crewe PS Darren Carter 15_CW57E_Speed Special 9 Crewe PS Stephen Talbot 16_CW57E_Tomb Flowers 9 Crewe PS John Royle 01_CW57E_Air and Water 8 Crewe PS Carol Cotter 08_CW57E_Dark Eyes 8 Crewe PS Ian Whiston 10_CW57E_Jade In Purple 8 Crewe PS Dave Barton 11_CW57E_Kirsti 8 Crewe PS Paul Stringer |
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Whitchurch/Mid-Cheshire Battle |
| Due to the inclement weather the judge wasn't able to make it on the night. An alternative date may be set for the competition. |
| John 15th January 2010 |
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A very happy Christmas to you all – and may 2010 be a prosperous new year for you too. |
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This Week Was |
| A bit of a Christmas bash, proceeded by a look at the 2009
L&CPU Colour Print Folio and an item on using flash by Patrick Whalley. As one thing melded into another we didn’t take the opportunity to thank Patrick very much indeed for bringing along all his flash equipment, demonstrating it and answering your questions. Patrick has some great stories about his exploits in natural history photography and perhaps we can persuade him to talk to us again soon. |
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And next week. . . . |
| We will all be too busy hanging up our stockings to have a
meeting – actually I’m sure a lot of you would come if we did have a meeting
on Christmas Eve but I’m afraid the Library is unavailable now until 14th
January 2010 when our own Ian Whiston will be showing us his East African
Safari pictures in our first meeting of 2010. But the next Club Event is the three-way inter-club competition with Mid-Cheshire and Whitchurch. It takes place on Tuesday 5th January 2010 at Whitchurch PS, St John’s Methodist Church Meeting Room in St John’s St., Whitchurch, SY13 1QT. 7.30pm. It is easy to find. Just take the A525 from Nantwich to Whitchurch and take the RIGHT (2nd exit) at the first roundabout on the outskirts of Whitchurch. This is the B5398 (Waymills, then Station Road) Keep on this road towards the centre of town until you meet the T junction with the B5395 at the traffic lights (about one mile). Turn RIGHT and then watch out for some shops set back from the road with a car park in front. You may need to here because St John’s Street is on the left immediately after the shops and there is very limited parking. There are over 200 spaces in the car park at the shops. The other club happening before the next meeting on the 14th January 2010 is the Committee Meeting on 7th January. If you have any matters you want the Committee to consider please email me or Tom. |
| Have a great Christmas and don’t forget that the early
morning dramatic lighting is later at this time of year!!! John 18th December 2009 |
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PDI III 2010 HAND-IN DATE |
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| The hand in date for the next PDI is 7th JANUARY and we DO
NOT HAVE A MEETING ON THAT NIGHT. This arose because 7th January
WAS to have been a meeting date and we had to cancel it because the Library
room is not available. |
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THIS WEEK WAS – PRINT LEAGUE 2 |
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| Brian Law was the judge. Brian is president of Macclesfield
CC. He admitted it was his first judging. I had deliberately chosen Brian
because he was mentioned to me as one of the most promising judges at the
last Judging Seminar and he proved to be very clear in his comments and to
have a good knowledge. Again, you learn a lot from a good judge – that is
part of the purpose and I knew from Brian’s work that he certainly knows
what he is doing. The number of entries was down by about 30. Entering prints is far more trouble and expenses but I would like to know if anyone is having difficulties of any sort in getting their prints done. There was some really excellent stuff and I am very proud of the quality and range of work we are producing at Crewe. Did you notice that Brian said “no wonder you beat us in the Robertshaw” – that is praise indeed because Macclesfield are a very good club. Well done to Carol & Simon Cotter, Martin McGing, Darren Carter, Paul Hill, Patrick Whalley and Bob Bradshaw on those first and second places, but it was good to see others (both new and established members) do very well – Sharon & Dave Barton, Peter Robinson, Peter Bainbridge, Steven Pepper, Les Simpson |
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Results (Scores 17-20) |
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| John Royle 11th December 2009 |
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Celebrations - What a month November was for us! |
| Firstly we had three members achieve LRPS on
12 & 13th and then last weekend we had two further great achievements: Firstly our fortunes in the L&CPU KO could not have been more extreme. All images but one out in the first round then that one image – Steven Pepper’s Urban Directions not only survived to the final round – securing us a decent place in the contest – it also WON BEST IMAGE!! Those who were there last night saw me present the lovely glass trophy to Steven and a GOLD MEDAL. Steven is a bit pleased!!! Urban Directions will be Image of the Week on the L&CPU website this weekend. When you look at it just take a few moments to think what a creative piece of work this is – and owing very little to Photoshop! Well done Steven! Secondly, as we were enjoying the day in sunny Rochdale at the KO, Ken Dickenson was up in Stirling watching his DPAGB assessment. We were all delighted to hear that he was successful. Well done Ken!! |
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John Royle presenting Steven Pepper with his trophy and Gold Medal for the L&CPU KO Best Image |
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Last Night – Open Evening |
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Distinctions since we now have 4 new possessors! Simon took us through the
procedures for LRPS and the other RPS distinctions and showed us a PDI
version of his panel and Carol’s. Martin McGing had brought his print panel
and explained the background to that. Thanks to both of you an excellent
presentation. One of the great things about the RPS distinction is the help you get in preparing for them and Simon mentioned a meeting in Leyland. Leyland PS are happy for other CPS members to attend the next session which be held on Sunday 10th January at Leyland and Farington Club, Derby Street , Leyland, PR25 4NU. Cost is £10 per person and if anyone is interested in attending they should contact Felicity Appleton. Leyland is a bit of a mono hotbed, they have a specialist group there. I think Simon said that they would be going and could offer a lift. The sad bit for me was that that wonderful lady of photography Margaret Salisbury is retiring from RPS assessment. Let us hope we will still have the pleasure of seeing her at Focus On Imaging and the many other events that she attends. Margaret has had a very long and glorious career in amateur photography (FRPS twice over among many other things) and we love to see her at Crewe – we’ll see if she will come over some time next season. It is one thing to create work which inspires others, Margaret is astonishingly helpful too and a pleasure to listen to. We then moved on to have a quick run-down on other distinctions – FIAP, BPE and a longer look at the PAGB ones. The RPS ones have a wider currency but the PAGB distinctions have grown directly out of club photography and are very popular. Ken had been kind enough to bring along his set of 15 DPAGB prints and talked us through what must have been a bit of a nail-biting session watching them being marked. For CPAGB you need to pre-qualify by entering the L&CPU Annuals, twice. We are well aware of this at Crewe and make sure that all new members who have entered our competitions have something entered in the L&CPU Annuals (you could still ask us to put something in, even if you have not entered our comps, but that is up to you). Even so there is a big demand for places – enter as soon as you can. There are two assessments per year and next April’s is already full (has been for months) – the November 2010 one is hosted by the L&CPU and will be at Wilmslow. If you want a good summary of distinctions there is an excellent one on the L&CPU Website – authored by Ed Roper. We keep it up to date when any changes are made. http://www.lcpu.org/docs/2009/External%20Distinctions%20Revised%200909.pdf |
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Images Critique |
| This is one of the most useful things we can
do for you! Thanks to those who submitted images. I do hope you found it useful and appreciate that it can be done anonymously if you wish. It is very very helpful to get an opportunity to “see your work as others see it”. Here are some of the things which emerged. 1. Be careful with frames round digital images. If used at all they should be only one or two pixels wide and no brighter than the brightest part of the image. 2. Darren’s shots were HDR – High Dynamic Range. This is a way of bringing out detail in the shadows AND highlights at the same time – impossible in a straight shot but done by combining 3 or more shots at different exposures. Darren used Artizen to combine his three exposures but it can be done with Photomatix and in Photoshop too. He had also added a blur layer which is a good way of adding a glow to your images. Finally, one at least had been very subtly toned. We liked them very much, though some highlights were criticised. See more at http://www.flickr.com/groups/photomatix and http://hdrcreme.com (Ken Last mentioned this one). 3. On a landscape shot we talked about how the relative positions and sizes of the picture elements (tree, middle distant hills and distant hills) could be changed by camera movement, dodging and burning, use of different focal length lenses etc. You can, you see “move mountains”. The top-rated images on hdrcreme at the moments were taken in Arizona, as our landscape shot was. 4. On a butterfly shot we talked about depth of field. This is a subject we should return to. A fairly long lens had been used which makes the depth in focus much smaller. Added to that the insect had been shot from the side, so the distance wing tip to wing tip would never be sharp. It is worth remembering that only things AT ONE PRECISE DISTANCE from the lens are actually dead sharp. Your DEPTH OF FIELD is the distance over which things APPEAR TO BE SHARP. It gets LESS with longer lenses, LESS with big apertures, LESS with shorter distances and LESS with bigger enlargements and vice versa. Another big factor is CAMERA SHAKE and a high shutter speed, image stabilisation and a tripod are the only ways of reducing this to less significant levels |
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Courses |
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Are a great way to improve your knowledge. Perma jet have some and John Moreton is booked into one on Photoshop in May. You can get a lift with him if you join the same course. And don’t worry, he’s a policeman!!! I think the one is http://www.permajet.com/cat/261/May_2010_Training_Courses.html . Simon Cotter is attending the "Digital Printing Workshop" at Warwick on the 13th of February and is also prepared to offer a lift, but he's not a policeman so caveat emptor! |
| John Royle 4th December 2009 |
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We’ve won the Macon!! |
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But what this means we have still to find out. The Exchange society has been asking for images to put on their website but we are still waiting to hear from Macon with a full explanation of what it is we entered!! |
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To Night Was – The Epson Presentation |
| Over 30 minutes late our friends from Epson had
some interesting things to say and had brought lots of food with them. We
whiled the time looking at the 85 Group National – Colour Section. I stabbed
at colour because it was the first PtE tp come up and also I was keen the
see how my adjustments to the projector looked “live”. Afterwards I thought
it would have been fun to look at the mono section because Carol Cotter
gained an award there with “Onlooker”. Well, if ever there were a case of planned obsolescence it is the inkjet printer. How long did the 2400 last? I think Epson are embarrassed at how long some of the earlier models have soldiered on for. I have to say that while the deeper details of colour printing were explained the thought crept into my mind that Henri Cartier-Bresson didn’t even know how to make a print (enlargements, he called them, “Ey have frans who do zat fa mee”)- so, if it all seemed a bit technical DON’T WORRY!!! Speaking of old printers Peter Stoneley kindly brought along some bits to clean the gummed up heads on my Epson 830. I’ll let you know how I get on. |
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Next Week – Open Evening. |
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We have some interesting stuff planned. A bit on using flash (works well on kitchen floors I understand), an answer to the question “What does LRPS mean”, but also YOUR PICTURES, so EMAIL THEM TO ME or tell me that you are bringing prints in. The idea is to talk about images you are working on or have queries about. |
| John Royle 27th November 2009 |
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3 Members gain LRPS |
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| It isn’t very often that we can celebrate one of our
members gaining a distinction but three at once is quite overwhelming!
Carol and
Simon Cotter and Martin McGing gained
their distinctions last week. Heartiest congratulations to the three of you. On the Open Evening which is coming up and we will spend some time explaining exactly what the RPS distinctions involve. |
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In the Pipeline |
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| We are working on a number of things at present which
may well be very useful to you. These are:- |
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Next week – Epson Roadshow |
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Tonight Was – PDI II 2010 |
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| Judged by Ian Stewart ARPS DPAGB. Ian had marked all the images prior to the night, viewing them on his calibrated monitor which he uses for his wedding photography. I say this especially because there was a feeling that our projector was not as bright as it should have been. This may have lessened our viewing pleasure a little but it had no effect on the marks. |
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Results |
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| John Royle 21st November 2009 |
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Tonight Was – Battle with Alsager – AT HOME |
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| Crewe won by a handsome margin, 352 to 320. The margin was
bigger with the prints (178/157) than the PDIs (174/163). Frank Hutchinson
LRPS was the judge and if I say he did a good job the response will be the
famous “well he would say that wouldn’t he!”. But, let’s face it folks, we should win. We have 58 members, over 20 of whom are capable of getting at least the odd 20. Alsager are a smaller club who tend to be very democratic about their entries. I really have a soft spot for them. The people I deal with most often; Muriel, John Roberts, Sally and John Dennis are very friendly and have an individual approach to photography which I much admire. |
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COMMITTEE MEETING – 11th November 2009 |
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We allowed ourselves to bathe for a while in our successes, especially in the L&CPU Annuals and the Robertshaw Trophy. Our new Nature/General categories in our competitions are working well and we have succeeded in introducing the membership card system and getting the sweatshirts done (here anytime now). We have entries in one national and one regional competition. Membership is up by two on our remarkable increase last year. But, we still need to move forward. Last night your committee resolved to:- |
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Finally, we had to postpone three items because
we hadn’t time to discuss them properly. While these are important leaving
them until January 7th (next meeting) will not matter too much. They were; a
revision of our Constitution and a policy on Child Protection and discussion
of a proposal to run a projected images (slides and PDIs) KO at the end of
the season. |
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Next Week – PDI II 2010 |
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The judge will be Ian Stewart DPAGB etc. |
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| John Royle 12th November 2009 |
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Tonight Was – John Wells FRPS – The Coming Of Age Roadshow |
| What an evening! Don’t ever say that you can’t
find anything to photograph! After watching the John Wells Show and his
cavalier style of finding subjects you cannot be short of ideas. True, they
would not all hold up as individual images but hardly a panel went up
without a few which would. So, shoot detail, get a wide-angle lens, run past
walls clicking, stand on the beach and throw your camera about, tape up your
viewfinder and you too could be producing stuff like this. Seriously, the way John had post processed the images does help to make them more intriguing but it was a masterclass in being imaginative in your approach. Anyone like to buy a tripod? |
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Next Week – Battle with Alsager – AT HOME |
| We welcome Alsager CC to Crewe for our annual Derby. 10 prints, 10 PDIs from each club, Frank Hutchinson LRPS is the judge, may a good time be had by all. |
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John Royle |
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NEXT WEEK |
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| John Wells FRPS, one of the most talented and funniest guys in photography! Don’t miss it. You will love his pictures. John is sponsored by Permajet which is the reason he can come all the way from Lincoln at minimal cost. Be there! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tonight Was – First Print League Competition for 2009 – 2010 |
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"Ghostly Watchers" by Carol Cotter - highest scoring Monochrome Print |
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| The judge was Bill Preston of Whitby Club PS. No, he didn’t
come that far, his club used to be the Shell PS but is now named after the
Clubhouse in Whitby Road, just down the way from Cheshire Oaks Retail Park. His marks didn’t have a natural frequency distribution, so we got a lot clustered round 14 instead of 16 (assuming the lowest mark was 12). The prints were fantastic. They were not just good in the sense of technical excellence though, there were plenty of new ideas there which was great to see – please keep that going – we need fresh ideas! Below are the results for 15 and above: |
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| PRINT COMPETITION LEAGUE ONE 2009-2010 Judge: Bill Preston LRPS CPAGB BPE2* |
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MONOCHROME
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| John Royle 30th October 2009 |
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Tonight Was – Open Evening |
| Wasn’t Steven’s talk/demo on night photography good? He was
cool, calm and confident and explained everything very clearly – great!
Thanks Steven. The pictures which he and Andy had created had a great atmosphere and were very “clean” – we tend to associate night shots with noise and grain – I suppose they are cleaner because Steven uses 100 ISO and also most of the parts of the image are only actually getting a short exposure. You can download a copy on hints and tips from the evening from the Downloads page. If you want to get started with Pictures to Exe then you can download it from www.wnsoft.com and Audacity is at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ . Do make sure you have adequate virus software before down-loading free applications they can get high-jacked. The address I have given got a big juicy tick from my virus software so it should be OK. I was very pleased that Wallace had sent in his new version of the portrait. It was much better – he had removed the red cracker (or whatever it was), laterally inverted the image and also the colour quality was better. I reckon he had definitely moved the picture up a notch. This whole exercise is precisely what we would like to see more of. Thanks go to Ken Last who loaned a camera and extension tubes last night, to Darren Carter for bringing in the Robertshaw Trophy and to Mary for setting up the “Battles” print selection. |
| John Royle 23rd October 2009 |
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Tonight Was – The First League PDI 2009 – 2010 |
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Highest Scoring Images from the First DPI League Competition |
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| Delayed by a week but well worth waiting for! The judge was Chris Kay ARPS and he had quite a task judging, in effect, two separate competitions with well over 100 entries altogether. You can see why we need to keep entries down to this sort of number. 90 actually seems ideal, any more and it starts to get into just an announcement of the marks and we don’t really learn as much. I used Dicentra for the first time. This software for running competitions is being widely adopted and is well thought of. It will be particularly useful for competitions which are judged “on the night” because of the facility to “hold back” images which the judge wants to award a higher mark to. There are an awful lot of commands to get used to and last night was quite nerve racking! Also, because of the way the competition is prepared I didn’t get to know the images as well as I normally do. Well, to the pictures; splitting the event into NH and General worked very well I thought. Here are the “16 and above” scores in both sections:- |
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| With two more competitions to go and a lot of similar
marks, partly due to having two sections the League is still quite wide open
at this stage, so there is everything to go for still! Heartiest congratulations to Bob Brown, new member this year and straight in at the top! Also Darren Carter figuring in there again, Bob Bradshaw with stunning quality in that Damselfly shot. Stephen Talbot managed to capture at least half of the romance of the American mid-West in such a simple image – Speed Special – and a mono image at that! Martin McGing had a very successful start. One I especially liked was Mary Davies’s “Calla Lily” – very attractive qualities in that and such a well balanced picture. So our new talent shone again – well done to you all!! THE NEXT PDI ENTRIES ARE NEEDED in TWO WEEKS |
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CHAPEL CC 25th Anniversary Inter-Club PDI Comp |
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| We came fourth in the event. Leek came second to Wigan 10.
It is worth noting that Leek have beaten Wigan 10 not too long ago. We
trounced Leek in the Robertshaw, so we are definitely in with the big lads! Reminder: Wigan 10 victory followed by Leek, then Romiley, then Crewe |
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Next week – OPEN EVENING - topics queried |
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| Flash, Night Photography, Raw Conversion, Moving items in
PS, Lenses. We cannot cover all these next week. We will have them in mind for future meetings if we don’t. I feel we need to have a bit of a post mortem on our first PDI and otherwise we will have to see what takes shape. It will be good! |
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Christmas Excursion |
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| At last nights' meeting Les announced a suggested
"Christmas Excursion" to Chester incorporating a ghost walk and dinner at
the Edgerton again on the way back. He had a good response to what promises to be another good CPS social event. He will have more details next week I am sure. |
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| John Royle 16th October 2009 |
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Tonight Was Supposed To Be – The First PDI of the Season |
| But we had to cancel because the judge was ill. All dark
clouds have a silver lining though and thanks to our good connections we had
available next week’s folio in digital format – AND our judge is available
next week. So a simple swap! I found it a very useful evening. The commentary for the Documentary Folio P was by Christine Widdall and we are BIG fans, so that was good – we can put out a few of the real prints next week for you to view. Then we had a chance to view the Robertshaw images and hear the comments and scores. It was great to gloat a bit over our resounding success! I really like the response you are giving to the pictures we view. I was especially pleased that one of our new members brought along a print for criticism – something we have wanted you to do for ages!! That worked very well and I’m sure you helped a lot. What do you want to cover in the Opening Evenings? Flash photography? Well this was asked about before and it resulted in Ian Aldcroft coming over to give us a demo on studio flash but I sensed that the the question was more about using flash on camera. Raw conversion – we have a range of Raw conversion programs being used. Photoshop – moving things without them looking like cut-outs and cloning successfully. Night photography. Different lenses – uses. You didn’t seem so keen on learning about some basic tech stuff on shutter speeds, apertures etc. |
| John Royle 9th October 2009 |
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"Moray Firth Sunset" by Darren Carter - Highest Scoring Image in the Robertshaw Trophy |
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CPS OUTSTANDING VICTORY in The Robertshaw Trophy for Projected Digital Images |
| Wish you could all have been at Macclesfield tonight to
hear an excellent judge (Graham Shaw) praise your work and see your club
sweep the field! We had an outstanding victory. 19 points clear of second place and an average of nearly 18 marks per picture - a truly wonderful achievement. The judge worked on the usual basis of holding back images that he wanted to award higher marks and at half time it was clear that victory would be ours since 5 of our images had been held and the ones he had marked had done well. Our total was 175, Leek and Macc came second with 156 and Holmes Chapel fourth with 153 (a good score for a smallish club at their first attempt at this kind of competition) and 5th were Blythe Bridge with 144. The images he held back were; Carol's "Onlooker" with 18, Dot's "Horse Whisperer" with 19, Patrick's "Goldfinch" with 19, Ian's "Kori Bustards Fighting" 19 (he added that the latter 2 would have 19 1/2 if half marks were allowed (they are!!!!). BUT image of the night was Darren's "Moray Firth Sunset" with the only 20. So well done to you all, especially Carol, Dot, Patrick, Ian and Darren. Can I remind you that we were able to get this great victory using only one image per worker - this is a remarkable achievement only possible because of the great number of excellent quality workers we have. I will make a short AV of the images, with titles and marks to show next week - we will be too busy on Thursday. We can admire our work, congratulate ourselves and, well, GLOAT!!! |
| Cheers, John |
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Tonight was The Great British Cup & L&CPU Slide Portfolio |
| We would like to enter the Great British Cup in November.
This will be the third one and will have a separate Natural History section
for the first time. We made our own commentary for the L&CPU Slides. It was disappointing that the copies were cropped and in some cases this spoilt the photograph. We could still appreciate many good points though. |
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Next Week – Tony Redford |
