Royal Photographic Society Digital Imaging Group News August 2016

DIG News - August 2016

‘ 79’ by Jack Bolton ARPS

This past months DIG Forum winner.

DIG PROJECTED IMAGE COMPETITION

Click on the logo above to go to the DIG web page where you can then read all information and go to the upload area.

This is the final count down for the annual Projected Image Competition.

Our deadline for your entry is August 18th, with selection on August 22nd.

Our selectors this year are Peter Clark FRPS, John Long ARPS and Val Duncan ARPS Full information about them all can be found on the PI Comp web page HERE. We have two classes – Open and Creative. You can enter 4 images in total, either across both classes or all in to one if that suits your style of work best. Acceptance rate is normally about 22%, with a RPS Gold medal winner in each class, who then go head to head for the overall RWT Trophy. Additionally each of the selectors have two RPS Ribbons to award in each class.

All the entry information and support on how to go through the process, is on the web page HERE. As well as the click through button that takes you to the entry server. If you have not ever entered this competition before then you will be required to register with the competition entry

system – this is a separate registration to your normal RPS login. Have your RPS membership number to hand as you enter. This is how we validate you are an eligible DIG Member.

We hope that we have made the entry information as explicit as possible but should you get into any difficulties then do get in touch with the PI Comp Organiser David Taylor. His email address is DIGPIcomp@rps.org Good luck to everyone. ************* The following email arrived from a member recently – he endorses how easy it is to enter the PI Comp………

Hi David, I have just uploaded and finalised my entries for the DIG PI comp. I just wanted to compliment you on having a simple and effective web site for doing all of this.

I usually always have problems with this sort of thing. I think logically and most sites don’t have a logical flow however your upload system was a dream to use, straightforward and very logical and it all worked first time.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers Dr Brian Law ARPS, CPAGB

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CONGRATULATIONS A short list this month, but still a very important one for one of our members who should be congratulated on his recent LRPS. Alan Cork LRPS

Kent

Last month we congratulated, amongst others, Andrew Marker for gaining his Fellowship. You may well have seen his panel in the Journal but having emailed with him I felt that there was more to it all than the Journal obviously had room for. So I am including Andrews story and few more of his images for you all to enjoy.

Andrew Marker FRPS As my panel has already been featured in the July issue of the RPS journal, the editor of DIG News has asked me to provide some additional background information, which was not printed in the journal.

I gained my ARPS in October 2013. About a year later I started to consider the possibility of an F panel, and explored a number of different themes but nothing quite seemed to work until I returned from Santorini last year.

Located in the Aegean Sea some 120 miles south-east of Greece’s mainland, this circular group of 5 islands are all that remains after an enormous volcanic eruption which destroyed the earliest settlements on a formerly single island and created a giant central lagoon. Originally known as Strongoli (the circular one) or Kalliste (the beautiful one), the name Santorini dates from the 13th century and is a contraction of Santa Irini (Saint Irene) the name of the old cathedral in the village of Perissa.

The towns and villages are full of Greek charm with many sitting precariously on the cliff faces. They are made up of whitewashed buildings, blue-domed churches, narrow alleyways, winding staircases and cobbled streets.

The island is renowned for the quality of its light and from the moment I arrived I could see the potential for simple graphic images using lines, textures, shapes and shadows that were unlike anything I had taken before.

One morning we got up early and drove out to a small country church, typical of many dotted around the island. The lighting was soft and gentle and I was captivated by the simplicity of the architecture and the varying shades of white. A couple of days later we had another early morning shoot at the church. The lighting was still soft but instead of being overcast the sky was pale blue, which was being gently reflected in the white walls. Captivated for a second time I came away with a completely different set of pictures. From that moment on I looked for other opportunities to capture images of a similar nature.

At the time I felt a deep connection with the pictures I was taking, although I was not consciously thinking about a panel. It was only after I had returned home, started processing the images and spent time exploring various ideas that the panel began to develop.

My original intention was to construct it solely from images taken on the two early morning shoots at the church, but it became apparent that I didn’t have enough variation in the images I had taken to make this work.

Broadening the scope to include images from other locations on the island took some time and effort, but I persevered. During this process the layout of the panel changed several times and at one point I was on the verge of booking flights and accommodation for a return visit to the island.

However I felt it was important to allow the panel to come to me rather than chase after it, so I stopped working on it for a month or so, during which time I went to Yellowstone on another photographic holiday.

Coming back to the panel refreshed, I found that I only needed 3 images from other locations on the island to make the panel work. (See panel layout numbers 3, 10, and 17) A Fellowship panel has to come from the heart with a subject that is personal to you.

For me as a church bell ringer, including the images with the bell and symbols of the cross gave it that personal touch. Attention to detail is another important aspect of a Fellowship panel. Producing a set of images that contained enough detail in the white walls to show texture in the stonework and maintain consistency across the whole panel with pictures taken in 4 different locations and lighting conditions was a challenge.

For the final submission, I reprinted all the images using one box of paper and one set of inks. They were printed about A5 size on Fotospeed Natural Soft Textured Bright White paper which I felt really suited the images and then mounted on 400mm wide x 500 mm high white mount board.

You can view the images in more detail on either the RPS or Bristol Photographic Society websites.

To end with here are some other images from around the island.

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DIG FORUM

Congratulations to this months winner of the DIG Forum competition.

Jack Bolton ARPS is a regular contributor to the Forum and is a master at this genre. He has a knack for finding really interesting, often colourful, angles and items in a very graphical and recognizable style.

In Jacks own words he tells us abut No 79 ‌.

Glass door and part of the wall of the Fashion Museum, Bermondsey Street, London. I loved the fact that the number was shown in huge lettering on the door, but, just in case you missed it, was also shown - in small letters - on the wall. When I showed the original shot on the DIG forum two or three years ago, people said they were distracted by reflections in the door, so I went back to work...

In second place was Chas Hockin LRPS with one of his favourite subjects – trains. But this one has a nice little twist to it.

I am working on a panel of images from the Didcot Railway Centre and I happened to notice the railwayman holding the sign, waiting to put it onto a train that was coming into the shed.

I asked if I could take his picture and he said yes, but started to stand up straight, so I asked him to lean against the train. The image was taken in the middle of the day which, in my view, gives the best light in the shed.

I have used Nik Colour Efex Bleach Bypass filter on the image as well.

‘Not to be moved’ by Chas Hockin LRPS

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NEW MEMBER OFFER In case you haven’t taken a look for a while my I draw your attention to our DIG Member Offers page on the web site HERE. You will find a new one from Andy Beel and we are always happy to put up others, where members are offering their services to other DIG members at a discounted price. Just get in touch if you want to add your offer to the page.

TUTORIALS FROM KEN PAYNE Ken has been working really hard producing more tutorials so I took a really good look around his web site to find two for this month that I felt might interest some of you.

One for beginners using Elements to start with – Basic Colour Adjustments to correct colour with Levels, also checking out the info palette. HERE

The second tutorial will help you get to grips with the DeHaze feature in LightRoom. To view this one HERE is the link.

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DIG EXHIBITION Our DIG Exhibition of prints moves to the RPS Fenton House this month where the top 30 selected images are hung in the reception gallery for all to enjoy.

So if you are Fenton House for any reason then take a few minutes to enjoy the display of work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------DIG MEMBERS SURVEY Thank you to the 25% of our members who took the time to complete our recent membership survey.

The data has now been downloaded and analysed so we can see that our membership age profile shows little difference over the past few years. The swing to the smaller cameras is what we expected to see, and the gradual shift over to LightRoom and drop off in the use of Elements, is interesting to note. Photoshop still rules, but the differential is less. NIK is scoring highly as the filter suite of choice: with use of Topaz in decline amongst our members. Besides these more obvious stats we have collected a lot of very useful information.

The results will be shared with our DIG Centre Organisers and they, like us in the DIG Committee, will use your feedback to determine the most popular topics for future meetings.

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POSTED ON THE FORUM RECENTLY ‌..

Phil Lavery LRPS Posted on the RPS Forum on July 9th 2016.

I think it is just over a year since I attended my first RPS photo day in Larkhall and came away really depressed - I had gone with a bunch of

images on a usb stick, which looked really awful when projected... but that also motivated me to get a P600 and start learning how to print... a few months later (November) I had achieved my LRPS and was ready to move onto the next stage, the ARPS. On April 8th I attended the Lasswade photo day and put forward a possible panel, which seemed to get enough support for me to decide to submit in June/July... then, on the 22nd April while out trying to get the last couple of images to complete the panel I had a heart attack... ..I was lucky, really lucky and for some reason decided to start entering photo competitions which either had an exhibition or publication as the end result.

The first I went for was Der Greif Magazine "A process 2.0" exhibition as part of Krakow Photofest and one of my images got through... Next was the Cambridge Open, organised by Shutterhub and another image was accepted, then RPS International four images through to the print stage, Bright Leeds, three images accepted, Der Greif Issue 9 an image preselected but didn't make the final cut for publication and finally, I just heard yesterday that my two images entered for the Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture Open Exhibition have both got through (see the images below) - Honestly I can't believe it, if it hadn't been for my heart attack I probably would never have thought about entering for these exhibitions/publications and if it hadn't been for the advice, help and support I had here on these forums, on the Contemporary Group Facebook page and at the RPS events I attended, I would still just be taking photos that never left the digital domain and I would not have progressed or achieved anything... So thank you all ! .. As for my ARPS panel, I still have a couple of images that I'm not happy with, but hoping to submit in September... whether I get through this time or not, doesn't really matter, the journey has been great and I'm looking forward to whatever comes next...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------BRICKBATS AND BOUQUETS I congratulate the group for organising this excellent exhibition, and producing a very good catalogue too.

John Hoskins ARPS

Couple of brickbats on the DIG Survey. One telling us it couldn’t be completed on an iPhone. We are sorry about that but as we use Survey Monkey the problem lies with them not us, so there is nothing we can do about that one.

The second one however is down to the committee – an OS member emailed to tell us that some questions couldn’t be answered unless you were a UK member. And as we made answers compulsory in most areas we should have thought more about that and given the OS members an appropriate tick box to opt out. So we learnt for next time on that score. Apologies.

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LENSBABIES Last month I featured the images from Lillian Lingwoods gallery and whilst emailing with her decided that maybe, like me, other members would like to know a little more about these fascinating lenses. So I asked Lilian for a short piece……..

The flower photographs in my online gallery ‘The Spirit of Nature’ were all taken with Lensbabies and were the product of my garden walks around my neighbourhood.

Right through from early spring until the end of autumn I take leisurely walks with my camera and a Lensbaby, with a sharp eye out for beauties that I can photograph. After a photo walk, I always print off each image taken in a neighbour’s garden and pop it through their letterbox by way of a thank you. I include my own handmade card with a greeting and some contact information. Often this leads to a phone call thanking me for the photograph and inviting me back to take more!

Mother’s Day flowers Lensbabies impart a little bit of magic to flower images, each in their own special way. For example Mother’s Day Flowers was shot with a Lensbaby Composer Pro at F4, the unique tilt shift stretching out the green bokeh at bottom left into long stems. Hydrangea was shot with a Velvet 56 at F2.8 which imparts a wonderful softness to images, whereas the Iris Next Door was taken with a Twist 60 at F2.5 which gives the lovely swirl effect to the background.

Hydrangea

Lensbabies are all manual and are available as lenses such as the Velvet 56, the Circular Fisheye and the Twist 60 (to fit some* bodies by the following manufacturers: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji mirrorless, Micro 4/3, Olympus and Samsung NX), or as an optic swap system, for example the Composer Pro II comes as a base unit into which various optics can be placed, for example the Sweet 35 and the Edge 80. There are also optics that fit mobile phones (iPhone and Android). The reader is recommended to visit the Lensbaby.com website where more examples of Lensbaby magic can be viewed.

There are three excellent Facebook groups dedicated to Lensbabies, including many wonderful photographs of a variety of subjects and also queries raised by photographers who have recently purchased, or are considering purchasing, a Lensbaby. They are Lensbaby Artisty, Lensbaby Addicts and Lensbaby Life. All three groups include the inventor of Lensbabies, Craig Strong, and other representatives of Lensbaby. So these are great places to find out whether Lensbabies are for you. *For specific details of compatibility please see the webpage: http://lensbaby.com/faqs/

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MEMBERS GALLERIES Looking through the galleries to pick two for you this month I spotted one I knew would be a goodie….. from Sheila Haycox ARPS. 34 shots of the amazing wildlife of Costa Rica. Whether you are a nature photographer or not I would deny anyone not to enjoy looking at these.

Great photography and lovely to see such natural beauty – thanks Sheila.

To view the work go HERE The second one I am going to feature will demonstrate that when I urge members to put up their Distinction panels on to the gallery that some do just that. This one is the LRPS panel from David Manning.

Well done again David on your success. A lovely example of an L panel, including the layout.

Once you link to the Gallery then by clicking the ‘View slideshow’ button at the RHS you will be able to see the photos at a decent size to enjoy

the detail. To view David’s panel go HERE

If you have anything that you would like to share with others then don’t forget to get in touch. DIG News gets put together towards the end of each month so if you have an exhibition or a meeting you want promoted then do email us.

Regards

Janet Janet Haines ARPS DIG Chair digchair@rps.org