AND we are off and running for 2012!  The first competition for the year was themed ‘Mitcham’ – Images from the City of Mitcham.

The night was judged by Edwardstown member, Chris Carter, who had to contend with a smaller than usual entry list of 84 images (17 Album, 3 slide, 24 digital, 30 Colour Prints and 11 Mono prints).  Don’t forget to check out our gallery to view our top digital entries and (new for 2012) our top print entries.

Also new for 2012 was the re-appearance of the Peoples Choice award, sponsored by The Blackwood Pizza Bar.  This week, the Peoples Choice was taken out by Jo Tabe with her Lenswood Ruin image.

It was also good to see a few visitors on the night.  Peter, Gloria, Sue & Barbara from the newly formed Adelaide Hills Photographic Club made an appearance, to see how we do things.  We wish them all the best on their venture.  It was also good to see another visitor, David, who saw our images at the Stirling library and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Anyhow, looking forward to seeing you all again on Thursday the 16th of February at Marks and Jennys for the natural light portrait night

Cheers, Ashley

I hope you’ve all had a good break and are ready for a new year of photography fun!

We’ve kicked off the New Year with an AudioVisual night. It was good to see so many faces return for the first meeting, and even a couple of visitors – Theen (who is posting some interesting images on Flickr in the club site) and Vicki’s friend Alison – welcome. We hope you can come back and share.

The night was the first outing for our newly colour calibrated computer/screen/projector (thanks Ashley) and let us have some AV fun.

I started things rolling with Shades of Red – a photo essay about the colour red – ranging from people to machinery, to flowers & fruit, macros (photo stacks) and light.

This was followed by Mark Pedlar presenting what he found in a 40 minute shoot around the garden.  He also filled in some time while we waited at one stage with the trip he & Jenny took to Paris last year. Brilliant images from that too (though there were a lot of bars). I think a club outing here would be perfect!

James Allan showed off his trip to Branxholm in Tasmania – complete with broken gearbox, heavy rain, some great shots of temperate rainforest and tin mines – once again highlighting his ability to see things from a different angle.

Things then stepped up a notch with the expert image manipulation of John Vidgeon – displaying firstly a series of images merged onto driftwood textures and then the Sweeps Festival in Rochester, UK.  In both cases a well crafted series of images highlight both the eye of the photographer and image processing methods. John’s experience with AV is well worth seeking out.

Heather Connolly gave us two slide shows – one of Kaikoura in New Zealand to watch whales (and albatross!) and one from her sisters trip to the sub-Antarctic islands highlighting the abundant wildlife, scenery and wind! Another candidate for a club outing 😆

Helen Whitford gave us the best of summer – images of what she’d been up to so far including her nieces wedding, a trip to Werribee zoo, New Years Eve as well as shots around her garden.

The presentations methods varied a little – with PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Photo2Exe, Aperture and Windows Live Essentials Movie Maker. Whatever method was used – they all gave us some enjoyable imagery.

Well done everyone!

A bit of housekeeping news:

• Our next competition is Mitcham – images from the City of Mitcham (see these map links from Mitcham Council or the SA Council Maps sites for city limits). Images must be from the region and may be included in the calendar this year to give it more local flavour.
• Please get your money for calendars in to Jenny as soon as possible – and please return any unused calendars. We have about 40 unsold – a pretty good effort which will help the clubs coffers. Thanks again to James for preparing, organising printing and chasing us all for images!
• There may be some changes to the programme during the year – mainly dates. You’ll be emailed with the updates.
• A reminder about competition entries. We have to be a little stricter due to the large number of entries, and so:
  • we will accept print entries from 7:30pm until 7:45pm on competition nights, late entries may not be entered. This is important for both the judges and our time keeping. We intend starting judging before 8pm
  • all digital entries must comply with the naming and size conventions outlined in the programme. Gary has indicated that entries that don’t meet the criteria will not be considered!
    Please ensure images are under 500kb in size and file names are in the format
    Photographers Name_Image name_Category
    (where Category is either Open or Set). Note the use of the underscore character.
    eg Joe Bloggs_The Winning photograph_Set
    If your not sure, ask. You can also have a read of the competition entry rules here
• I’ve updated the Camera Clips page for those that don’t receive it – with James’ latest information. Its a good read as always, and includes some useful tips about noise reduction, lightning photography and the calotype process.

Hope to see you all soon

Cheers

Chris 😉

After a few hiccups the Stirling Library Exhibition is up and running but sadly almost over!

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Kelly Morris, the Community Programs and Marketing Officer at Stirling Library kindly agreed to allow us to exhibit some of our images in the library from 15-Dec-2011 to 15-Jan-2012. This has been a wonderful opportunity to display the work the club produces and raise the clubs profile as well. Kelly even mentioned us in the Library Newsletter.

A catalogue of the 29 images (see the table below) provided by Adrian, Ashley, Eric, Gary, Helen, Hilary, Jenny, Jo, Julie, Mark, Melinda, Ray and myself was provided on the display along with a short description about the club. To date, over 140 of these little sheets have left the library! Kelly also informs me that there have been a few inquiries regarding joining the club as well!
The quality of the images was again superb and that’s not from me but from people I’ve spoken to outside of the club who have seen it.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to repeat the exhibition again this year so  please consider providing 2 or 3 of your best images for display.

Our thanks must go to the Adelaide Hills Council, Stirling Library, the BPC members who provided images (some at short notice) for the show and Kelly Morris.

If you get a chance, drop in and have a look.

For those interested in who displayed what here is the list of photographers and titles:

Chris 😉

As Ashley mentioned in the last post the Blackwood Photographic Club Annual Exhibition has been run and won.

We had a great selection of entries in all categories, and once again, members entries were of the highest standard. Its a pleasure to view the work that is submitted each year from such a talented group of people. Many thanks to our judges for their great effort, and of course thanks to our scorers, collaters and Mark Pedlar for putting together the award booklet.

Without any further ado, here are the winners and the awards.

Firstly, the Bill Templar Award for 2011 has been awarded to Julie Goulter. Julie’s contribition to the club over many years has been far beyond the call of duty, always with a smile, and this award salutes her enormous contribution to the club. Congratulations Julie!

The slideshow below documents the awards ceremony (thanks to Ray Goulter for taking the photos). Oh – and the guy in the blue shirt that seems to be in every image is just me…. 😆

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Over the year, we see many outstanding images – and those with the highest scores in each category are rewarded with the following awards.

Aggregate points awards

After our Annual Exhibition night, our best images were:

Annual Exhibition Top images

Latest news

• The awards night also had a bonus. The Mayor of the City of Mitcham, Michael Picton, attended our awards night and saw the many images we produce. We also were informed that we were successful in our Community Development Grant application with the City of Mitcham for the purchase of a Spyder3 Pro calibration device to correctly calibrate our digital projector and laptop. On 5-Dec-2011 Ashley & I attended a Civic Reception in the Mayor’s Parlour at the Mitcham Council Chambers to receive the award. We sincerely thank the City of Mitcham for their support and will utilise this device to improve the presentations both within the club and with visiting speakers and within the community. This has already started, as on the night of the reception a number of groups also receiving awards approached us about photographic opportunities and education within the community. We’ll keep you informed.
• Our 31 day Challenge is running running – and there are lots of great images popping up – keep putting them in and watching!
• We also have an exhibition of 29 images from a number of club members at the Stirling Library, Mount Barker Rd, Stirling. If you’d like to pop in and see what we look like framed 😆 the exhibition runs until mid-January. I’ll pop an image of the display in here when I get a chance

Finally, I’d like to wish all club members and regular readers of our little missives a Very Happy & Joyous Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
See you next year (unless we meet up for a shoot!)

Cheers

Chris 😉

Yep – the 31 Day Challenge is running again.

After last years successful run, and with Blackwood Photographic Club having a quiet December the idea is to Take a photo every day for 31 days and post it on the club Flickr site with the tag “31 days”.

Topics can be as varied as you like. Last year I tried windows – and it was hard. James is having a go at landscapes, but then you don’t need a topic – just an image a day! As James said last year “I expect that the pictures will create a journal of life over the month of December. There are no topics and no themes.”

So if your interested, we will run the 31 day challenge through the club Flikr group.
Just a note : You don’t have to post the photo on the same day – but please put in one photo for each day.

If you’d like to see what we did last year, just search for “31 Days” in the tags and see what pops up.

For those without a Flickr account, refer to the October 2010 edition of Camera Clips for details on how to set one up and how to post images on the club group.

And one more thing – Yvonne & I set up another challenge – the BPC Photo Chain. We start with one image, then everyone post up to 2 images per month that are related to the original, but varied from it. We vote over the month and the top image set the theme for the next month. Its a private group, but all BPC Flickr group members will be invited (most have been). If your interest and have received an invitation, sign up and see how you go.

So start snapping and get some images together.

Chris 😉