Waverley Camera Club

Our beginners group meet on the fourth Tuesday of each month at Wadham House. All members, new and old are invited to attend. The group covers everything from basic camera control through to digital image manipulation.

Homework for the July beginners class is as follows:

Dig out the manual for your camera and look up the section on white balance and how to change it. Most cameras won’t allow you to change the white balance whilst in automatic mode so if you need to put your camera on to another setting that is quite okay. Nearly all models of camera have a setting very similar to automatic – on a Canon it’s called Program – which will allow you to change the white balance but still work out the exposure and aperture settings for you.

Make sure that if you take it off automatic that you are still shooting jpeg rather than RAW.
Once you have studied the manual and can change the white balance I want you to pick one subject and photograph it using every preset white balance setting available to you. By preset I mean daylight, cloudy, flourescent etc.. Do not concern yourselves with custom settings at this stage.

You will need to set your camera up on a tripod and shoot all your shots as quickly as possible.
Try to do this at a time when the light isn’t fluctuating. For this to work you need to have your subject lit the same way in each shot. Put all your knowledge of composition and lighting to good use and try to produce the best shots you can.

Once you have taken all your shots with each white balance setting go through them and select the one you like best and the one you like least. Resize them so that they are no wider than 1024 pixels and no higher than 768 pixels. Name the files correctly, and for the title put the name of the white balance setting used and wether it’s the best or worst.

For example my best shot could be: WCCA-0907-14A-Tungsten best
Send the two files to: homework@waverleycameraclub.org by 7pm on Monday the 27th of July.

Now here comes the bit where I make it harder, after all it’s more fun when I’m nasty.

THE SUBJECT YOU CHOOSE TO PHOTOGRAPH MUST BE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE.

Enjoy!

This month’s homework for those attending the beginners class on the 23rd of June is:

I want you to pick a subject, it can be whatever you like – your house, your car, a pair of socks, a roadsign, next doors cat with the runny eye, anything at all and photograph it in the best light possible.

If for some reason you do choose a pair of socks then you will be able to control the light. If you choose something outdoors then you will have to work with whatever light you get over the next couple of weeks.
Too easy! you say. To make it a bit harder I want each of you to reply to xkaishox@hotmail.com by next Monday and tell me what it is that you are going to shoot.

The main purpose of this assignment is to get you thinking about light. If you were at last Tuesday’s meeting you would have heard Bev Pascoe stress over and over how important lighting is to make a shot stand out.

I want you not to forget about composition either so whatever subject you choose I want you to shoot in both the landscape and portrait formats and use whatever compositional tools you can.

So there it is. Your assignment for this week is to choose a subject and let me know what it is by this coming Monday (the 8th).
Shoot that subject in the best possible light.
Email two shots – one in landscape format and one portrait format to:
homework@waverleycameraclub.org
Have your emails in by 7pm on Monday the 22nd of June.
Label your files with your name and then number from 1 to 2.
eg: peted01 and peted02

Most importantly: have fun doing it.

Last Night (Tuesday May 26th) we had our first beginners group meeting in our new format at Wadham House.

The meeting was extremely well attended with 24 attendees. Well done to all of you who came along.

Because our numbers have grown to such an extent we will now need to ask you to submit your “Homework” photos before the meeting via E mail. We will publish the new e mail adddress on the blog at the same time as we announce this month;’s homework topic…keep a watchful eye.

Also, please continue to use the online comment gallery. Please make sure you are involved in both sides of the equation, both sending your images for comment, and making comments on other images.

To get more value out of the comments it would be helpful if you could include with each image you submit, a sentence or two explaining your image, what you saw and what you wanted the viewer to see.

Keep snapping…and keep improving!

Don’t forget…our monthly beginners class will be held this coming Tuesday (May 26th) at Wadham House at 7.30pm NOT at the house of Donald Boyle as has been the case previously.

All members, new and old, are invited to attend.
Don’t worry if you have not attended any previous classes, each class is “Self Contained” and does not rely on continuing from previous classes.

Classes last for 2 hours and cover topics such as composition, camera controls and image editing using tools such as Lightroom and Photoshop.

Refreshments are provided…providing our regular attendees remember to bring along some refreshments!

See you there…