August 2018 Workshop – Tom Putt, AGM, and Swap and Sell

August 17, 2018August 17, 2018 Stephen Edmonds

We are pleased to announce that for our workshop on Tuesday 21 August 2018 we will be in the newly renovated main hall at the Mount Waverley Community Centre.

At 7:30pm we will be holding our Annual General Meeting, members please ensure that you sign in on the night. We aim to keep this as short as possible.

Our main feature of the evening will be a presentation (starting at 8pm) from award-winning fine art landscape photographer Tom Putt.

Our final item of the night is the Swap and Sell. Many items have already been listed via email, but feel free to bring along any other items you no longer need but think other members might.

Sunshine to hail at South Wharf

August 16, 2018August 26, 2018 Ross Eddington

Whilst the weather for our recent South Wharf Outing wasn’t ideal for a stroll, it produced some interesting opportunities for us to photograph. We had everything from sunshine to hail which frightened a few off, but the dedicated were rewarded.

We met at the Melbourne Convention Centre during the later part of the afternoon and pretty well experienced hail immediately. Inside the Convention Centre seemed to be the place to be. This gave us some opportunities to capture the architecture of the building and at the same time shelter from the rain. The three levels gave us some interesting angles and an elevated view over the Yarra. After the rain the sun shone and created some spectacular reflections.

The glorious sunset at 5.41PM never arrived so we captured some shots around the South Wharf Marina during the ‘golden hour’ and then enjoyed dinner together at Hooks by the Yarra. The meal was excellent but I think the staff added to the experience.

The weather during the evening turned out to be delightful, so again we tried the upper level of the Convention Centre by night, with different effects. The Webb and Seafarers Bridges were also highlights.

We headed home at about 9.15PM to avoid the crowds from the football but could have stayed longer. The rain definitely contributed to a great Outing!

More images from our members can be found in the gallery.

August 2018 ‘Architecture/Urban spaces’ results

August 14, 2018August 15, 2018 Stephen Edmonds

Judge: David Simmonds

Set subject EDI

A Grade: Rosie Hughes – PARLIMENT HOUSE

B Grade: Samantha Pearsall – Market Street Hong Kong

Open EDI

A grade: Russell Lucas – Creative Concrete

B grade: Ross Major – The Long Stride

Open Print

A grade (tied): Russell Lucas – Kata Tjuta Drama _

A grade (tied): Vicki Moritz – Devils river fog

B grade: Chris Herft – New York Escape

Change to August 2018 competition night

August 3, 2018August 6, 2018 Vicki Moritz

I wish to notify a change of date for our August Competition night. We have a professional photographer as a judge and due to a last minute job he was unable to attend in person on 7th August. To avoid reading out his typed comments on our images we have swapped nights with the Creative group as follows:

7th August will be the Creative group night at Ashwood hall facilitated by Paul Spence. Everyone is welcome to the Group. No prior experience is necessary. There will be a focus on adding “Lighting and Shadows in Composites” using layers and layer masking in photoshop.
14th August will be the competition night – probably at Ashwood hall. Print entries for September will be accepted at the competition night, a week later than usual.

September EDI competition entries are still due on 7th August.

Our usual activities for the week remain unchanged:

The next beginners course by Alan Bennett will be starting on 6th August 7.30 pm, Wadham house
The Honours SIG is on 8th August, 7.30 at Wadham house

Apologies for any inconvenience.

The KL and China trip – July 2018

August 1, 2018August 11, 2018 Vicki Moritz

Little did I know when Anthony Yap proposed this trip last year what an adventure it would be! Those of us who made the trip were myself, Anthony, Rosie Hughes, Russell Lucas, Marie Shaw, Alan Bennett, Geoff and Jill Shaw, Cookie Chong, Jenny and Cheng Yip. Paul had to head home after KL to attend family matters. In addition to our club members there was Marcellian Tan (one of the organisers), a group of his friends and the irrepressible Jack, our local guide.

We started in KL with a side trip to Melaka – it helped to acclimatise with the hot weather and to remind some of us how to use our cameras. KL was a dusty bustling city with a lot of building happening in a rather random fashion and terrible traffic. Melaka was charming – I would go back there any day. Highlights of the Malaysian stopover were the Iron Mosque (at dawn), Petronas towers at dusk and MelakaJonkers and the Serkam Mosque. Marie and I gowned up to enter the mosque – but as mere females were only allowed to look in from the outside areas.

Then on to China, after arrival at the Guilin airport we got onto our barely air conditioned bus with all our luggage. This was our main form of transport for the week other than various forms of local transport and all the walking. First stop was the Longji rice terraces via the village of Dazhai. This gave us an introduction of what was to follow. We transferred to a village bus, then local vans…then porters carried most of our camera gear and overnight bags in baskets as we walked to the rice terraces at Xiaozhai Yao village. The Yao people were very friendly and the terraces a wonderful exercise in graphic design- complete with local models! The trip back was equally eventful with a bit of 4 wheel driving down the mountain tracks.

South Wharf Night Outing – August 2018

July 30, 2018February 15, 2026 Ross Eddington

Our outing for August will be to South Wharf during late afternoon and evening on Saturday 11 August 2018.

South Wharf Precinct Photography
Sunset shoot (sunset at 5.41PM)
Elevated Vantage Point Photography
Dinner together
Possible Photography from King Street Bridge
Possible Photography of the Flinders Street Station Building which has just been refurbished

We will meet at 3.45PM at South Wharf. The outing would expect to conclude at about 9PM.

Results from KPS Monochrome Interclub 2018

July 29, 2018 Stephen Edmonds

We recently participated in the Knox Photographic Society Monochrome Interclub competition for 2018 alongside Camberwell, Maroondah, Mornington, Rosanna and Williamstown clubs.

Congratulations to the following members for receiving place awards:

Hedley Anderson – First place for “Rohan” in novice prints

Hedley Anderson – Highly commended for “Ted and Lexi” in novice prints

Peter Bond – Second place for “Adrift” in open prints

Trace O’Rourke – Third place for “The View” in novice EDI

All of our entries (and individual scores) can be viewed in the following galleries:

Photographing Reptiles

July 27, 2018August 11, 2018 Lenore Pedrina

Our July workshop was shooting Reptiles and Australian Animals thanks to Aussie Wildlife Displays. The guys brought along a shingle back lizard, a blue tongue lizard, two pythons including an albino, a green tree frog, a crocodile, a sugar glider and Elvis the Red tail Black Cockatoo. Although cold and blustery it was a great night with the models behaving themselves most of the time. The Baby Crocodile kept his pose with his mouth open for an amazing amount of time.

Photos from the night can be viewed in the gallery for the night, and below are some wonderful shots taken by members Fred Seeber, Tim Keane and Ken Barnett.

Notes on sharpening in Lightroom

July 24, 2018July 24, 2018 Geoff Shaw

Sharpening images is a basic skill, but often done badly. Too little sharpening and your image will look soft or fuzzy, too much and sharpening artefacts such as halos around detail and edges are prominent. So here are a few notes to assist in understanding what the various sliders in Lightroom’s sharpen tool do.

In the Develop module, the sharpening tool has 4 sliders, Amount, Radius, Detail, Masking. Feel free to play with these and investigate the effects on the image. The “square-cross-hair” icon at the top left of the preview area can be clicked to then click on a relevant area of your image to centre the preview on that area. Or, you can move your cursor over the preview image and note that the cursor becomes a hand. Click and drag to reposition the preview of the image. Choose an area of the image where there is some detail that you are interested in being sharpened. It may be, for example, eyes, or, in this example, some feathers with lots of detail. You can see in this image (right) that there the feathers are a little fuzzy. This preview has the default settings of 25 sharpening, 1.0 radius, 25 detail and 0 masking. Some sharpening is normally expected because of the complex procedures needed to translate the pixels in raw images – in the sensor the different colour pixels are different positions and need to be combined – to a rectangular grid of pixels, each with RGB values (for a brief overview try Demosaicing – Wikipedia if you are interested in the technical details).
Read more “Notes on sharpening in Lightroom”

Burst mode at the motocross

July 20, 2018July 22, 2018 Ross Eddington

Nineteen keen photographers attended the Motocross Outing last Saturday. We meet in the Bunnings, Vermont South car park at 9.15AM and walked to the Motorcross (about 200 metres).

The weather was blue skies all around but we would have preferred a little cloud cover. The Nunawading and District Motocross Club allowed us to access various ‘on track’ locations for close up action. OH&S vests and signed indemnity forms were a requirement.

The Outing gave us the opportunity to practice capturing sharp images of fast moving subjects and at the same time include some motion blur – challenging!

Burst mode appeared to be the choice of the day and so by lunch time, most had captured several hundred images; the action was non stop.

More images from the day can be found in the gallery.

Waverley Camera Club

A members photographic club in Mount Waverley