Club night summary – 20th December

An overview of our new exciting website was given by its creator George Purchase. The new site is being launched on January 3rd 2019.

One of our social nights of the season, celebrating Christmas with a seasonal quiz nicely put together by Cat.  In addition, we showed entries for our challenge of ‘own Interpretation of Iconic Images’.

Great food was provided by Vanessa and Denise with support from Tom with a supply of drink.  Rod Lacey also organised a successful raffle on the night.

A nice social evening for the end of 2018.

Steve

New Location for Studio Evenings

At the end of August, Art Of Wonderland Studio was closed, we have been looking for new premises to shoot from, and have secured studio space at West Herts College.

The studio space is slightly more expensive to hire per hour, and the college closes at 9:00pm, therefore start time is now 7.00pm

What Judges are Looking For

Some links on what judges could be looking for in photo competitions, and what they’re board of too.

A somewhat irreverent piece written by David Schloss in Digital Photo magazine: https://www.dpmag.com/how-to/shooting/photo-contest-tips-from-the-judges/#

An excellent check-list of things to avoid in competition entries by Roger Wates from the Tonbridge Camera Club: http://www.pagbnews.co.uk/sites/default/files/newsletters/en105271213_JudgingSpecial.pdf

Understanding Colour Calibration

The club owns colour calibrator that members can borrow to calibrate their monitors for a nominal charge.  Speak to Cat if you would like to use it.

Why Calibrate?

It’s important to calibrate your monitor so that the colours you see on screen are the same as you will see when your PDI is projected at the club.

There will always be a difference between the image on a laptop screen or monitor and on a projector. This is because the laptop screen/monitor is back-lit whereas the projector screen is reflecting light. So be aware that some images look better on a monitor than they do projected, and vice versa. The aim of calibration is to make the colours as close as possible between the two formats.

We advise judges not to view the images on the club’s laptop during a projected competition as the colour, brightness and contrast in the image are calibrated to the projector rather than the laptop.

Hints and Tips

Warm-Up Time: Always let your monitor warm up for at least 30min before using the calibrator.

Ambient Light: The light levels in the room will alter the light that is being reflected in your monitor, along with any strong colours in the room so be careful if you are trying to calibrate in a room with bright red walls! The Spyder has advice on ambient light in it’s help section.

Notification: It’s probably best to select “never” when the Spyder asks if it should notify you when you should re-calibrate your monitor, otherwise you’ll get annoying messages on screen to remind you when to re-caibrate everytime you start up your computer. It’s a good feature when you own the Spyder yourself, but not when you’ve borrowed it from the club!

Useful Links

Booksmart Studio has a guide to colour management:

Northlight Images has a number of articles on colour management:

If you use Blurb to self-publish you’ll want to take a look at their guide to colour management:

SD Services offer calibration and colour management services:

Photo Friday have a useful monitor calibration tool on their website:

Club night summary – 13th December

Damon Guy gave an Interesting talk on ‘ how to use the rules of Photography and how to break them successfully’ The presentation included many Images to demonstrate the points made.

Damon who is Involved with competition judges training, also gave our members insight into the where the CACC are trying to open judges minds by encouraging the visiting judges to view and appreciate the art content and concepts of Presented Images and not purely by scoring to established rules. An interesting topic.

Steve

Club night summary – 6th December

Workshop evening professionally led by Ant Highet demonstrating Portraiture Lighting and practical use, with members both taking shots and ‘posing’ for each other.

An enjoyable night on an Interesting subject. Watch out fora few (dodgy models) member pictures entering competitions in the future! (webmaster edit – your BIO picture is from this session Steve!)

Steve