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Unfortunately this clashes with our portrait and flash photography group, but if you are not going along to that, please come along to the judging night to represent the club, and possibly learn a thing or two from the judge’s comments.

The judging of the Pakenham National is this Saturday. We are still waiting to hear if observers are permitted or not. If they are, details will be posted in the next day or so. Let Pete know if you are interested.

Finally, this Sunday is the first of August which means it is also time for our monthly Sunday outing. As the exhibition for the VIGEX 2010 Salon also opens on that day we have decided to head down to Geelong for the exhibition (at the Geelong Art Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong). We will meet at the gallery at 11am, have lunch somewhere around 1pm, then a photo shoot somewhere after lunch.

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With Stephen Edmonds on props, Pete Davies at the light switch and some generous supplies from some forward-thinking members, many party-poppers were detonated at various angles and millisecond delay settings; no single one popped the same: some fizzled, a few backfired onto Stephen’s fingers, some hit Dave Sumner in the head – entertainment on its own! Using the club’s sound triggered flash system (built by Craig Terry), in a dark room with about 15 open camera shutters, those attending got the opportunity to photograph some unique action,especially towards the end of the night when positioning and timing of the flash had been perfected.

Some more members brought a few [increasingly rare] tungsten lightbulbs to smash up with a metal wrench (these glass bulbs proved surprisingly difficult to shatter!) Keeping to the pyrotechnic flavour of the night, the workshop finale involved an exploding apple that had to be seen to be believed.

A fun night of photography and many a laugh was shared between club members for another highly successful WCC workshop.

This was awesome fun last time and those that were there will know what sort of things to bring.

For those who weren’t: bring your camera and a tripod. Last time around we were setting off party poppers, smashing light globes and bursting balloons.

If you can think of anything else which happens at high speed and will set off a sound triggered flash please bring them along.

Dennis Eric Creasy, 1931 – 201ish or so

Born in London, Dennis was one of a very rare vintage: 1931 was the year of the lowest birth rate ever recorded in both Britain and Australia. Surviving 250kg aliquots of HE, V1s and V2s he was finally bequeathed his mother’s Box Brownie during his last years of schooling. Hard economics set in: two rolls of “120” film = 16 exposures of 2¼ x 3¼ = One week’s pocket money. Fortunately his father was an amateur photographer so he learnt early to do his own processing (in open dishes) with the cost of chemicals “on the firm”. Developing tanks were unheard of in his household.

With his second roll of film he cycled down to his old haunt where he had been a war time evacuee for a while and photographed the old Saxon church near Didling, W. Sussex, at the foot of the South Downs.

This was a church noted for having kept its head down and hence was overlooked during Henry VIII’s gold grab of 1536 to finance his many girlfriends. This effectively destroyed any vague interest Dennis may have had for bricks and mortar but not for girlfriends.

Ten years later his father bequeathed to him his “620” Kodak folding camera. Frustrated by this continued “large” format being wished on him while “everyone” else had 35mm he opened it up and glued a mask inside to give 16 half size negatives. Consequently he then had to build an enlarger.

Another decade rolled by and, in spite of the cold war, Russian cameras were in the shops. Now he had a wife, a mortgage and money in the bank! Gentlemen, he advised, should always marry a rich woman. So he splashed out on a “Zenith E”: 35mm and colour prints at last!

The “E” saw him through the next 1½ decades and into Australia. But by now Anno Domini had caught up with him and his arms had grown too short for him to be able to read his slide-rule (Slide-rule? What the hell’s that?) let alone focus his camera.

Fortunately for his coronary and blood pressure, autofocus widgets were appearing in the shops and in 1986 a quick trip back to Britain facilitated the duty free acquisition of an autofocus Minolta 7000 and extra lenses. Right up until the death of film, the 7000 never gave him the slightest trouble.

Being an old fashioned “see the wheels go round” engineer, Dennis did not welcome the advent of the digital age. So much so that he retired early to avoid having to use the ghastly electronic widget with which his employer insisted on decorating his desk. Rumour has it that he was latterly in possession of some form of digital Sony gadget which enabled him to use his 7000 lenses. However, he professed to the very end that until he had confined the progeny of his 1469 rolls of film safely into albums he had no intention of getting involved with “all this new fangled digitry”.

In order to preserve a level of insanity he took up playing cards and also became a rowing coach.

In mid 1992 a portrait of WCC then President, Marcia Brown, appeared in the local rag and he immediately applied to join the club. By 1996 he had graduated to Club secretary and also succeeded Christine Anfried as Newsletter editor for several years (with the able assistance of Prue McColl) In 2005 the WCC held an exhibition at the Highway Gallery and beside his two offerings was Epitaph 1:

“Dennis Creasy is a retiring retired engineer. He is very selfish and takes snaps purely for his own personal erotic pleasure with no interest whatever in what others may think. Those who view his images must be prepared to put their own brains into gear if they wish to get anything out of them”.

Eventually he joined that noble band of A Graders. Not, he would hasten to point out, because he was a good photographer but because, like any devious student, he read the (then) rules and then religiously applied them. His mental state declined as he lamented the mutation of the Newsletter to the Blog and he appeared not to have had a remission. He had always hoped that one day he would have had his own private studio in his home and taken pictures of women which they would one day have been proud to show to their grand-daughters.

“The report of his death was an exaggeration” (with apologies to M. Twain) but he will leave a wife, four children and ten grandchildren.

Epitaph 2: “Come back hard copy; all is forgiven!”

A grade: Vicki Moritz – Soggy foggy morn

B grade: Rosie Armitage – Can you do this?

EDI images of the month

A grade: Pete Davies – Eureka reflection

B grade: Donna Clarke – Swing

Last year a few club members entered images to good result. If you are interested in entering images this year then be aware that entries close on Friday 16 July, a little over two weeks away.

Judging of the entires occurs on 31 July, with the exhibition on the weekend of 11-12 September. Like the recent Warragul National, we will be planning an outing for a nearby location on one of those days.

Meet there at 10am. It’s not mentioned on the website but we have been told that there is an entrance fee of $5. It may just be a gold coin donation, so be prepared.

There’s also a restaurant there which may be open for lunch – if you are interested in having lunch at the restaurant please let Pete know ASAP.

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Official Opening Night Saturday 19th June 2010 -7.30pm at St. Paul’s Anglican Grammar School, 150 Bowen Street, Warragul.

Saturday, 19th June 2010 – 10:00am – 10:00pm
Sunday, 20th June 2010 – 10:00am – 4:00pm

The plan is to go to Mount Worth State Park beforehand.

Meet at the picnic ground carpark at 10am.
Wander around for a couple of hours.
Lunch in Warragul somewhere tbc
Meet at the exhibition at 1pm.

Approximately an hour and a half drive to Mount Worth from Mount Waverley:

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A grade: John Hadfield – Excited “E” String

B grade: Anne DiCarlo – Autumn Reflections

EDI images of the month

A grade: Pete Davies – Hazelwood

B grade: David Burton – Three Ride Spin Off

The VAPS Interclub is held once a year and is open to all Camera Clubs in Victoria. This year the exhibition of entries took place at the Muster in Apollo Bay. WCC finished mid table in each of the three sections. The entries are scored out of 15 points and each club gets to enter 5 images in each section.

• In the Novice section, WCC got 45 points. The winner, Geelong Camera Club, had 55.
• In the Open print section we received 45 points. The winner, Camberwell Camera Club, was awarded 57.
• In the EDI section Waverley got 50 points while the first placed club was Southern Suburbs Photo Society with 60.

The judging of the Camberwell Interclub took place last Monday night and the judge was the well known Adrian Smith.

Apart from Camberwell four other clubs were invited to participate. The other clubs were Geelong, Frankston, Doncaster and ourselves. When I arrived at Camberwell and saw who the other clubs were I thought we would be lucky if we didn’t finish last in each section (large, small and EDI – all monochrome). At the recent VAPS interclub those other four clubs would all have been in the top five or six clubs overall. On top of that Geelong and Frankston both have well over 100 members.

It came as a very pleasant surprise then that we finished equal first in the EDI section. We got 66 points along with Camberwell and Geelong. In the large print section we had 59 while the winner, Frankston, had 65. Small prints was won by Doncaster with 64 while we had 60. So overall, while we did come last we certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves. What was most pleasing was the number of people were able to muster to attend the evening on very short notice.

Congratulations to everyone who took part in these competitions either as entrants or attendees at the judging evenings.

The next interclub will be the Knox Monochrome Interclub – stay tuned for more details.

Cheers,
Pete