Member Workshop

The annual Member Workshop was held on 17th. We started the evening with the most important business of the night. Perhaps the most important of the year. Not wanting to deprive any no-shows of vital information, I have embedded the information here:

After the cat videos was reluctantly turned off at the start of the official meeting and ribbons were handed out, we had three presenters for the evening. Donna, Bruce, and John. Oh, hey. That's me.

Donna Hitchcock demonstrated Content Aware Fill; one of the ways Photoshop allows you to remove distractions from your photos. In a nutshell: Make a selection around what you want to get rid of, go to Edit -> Fill Selection, make sure you select Content Aware, then BOOM! Photoshop makes a usually solid guess about what should replace what you have selected, based on its surroundings. For example, look at her example photo above. Do you see the 3 birds on the lower wire? No? You only count 1 bird on that wire? Exactly the point.

Bruce Pannock showed images from a project he has been working on for quite some time. In his own words:

"During a period in my life when due to my health issues I was not able to leave my house and I lived on one floor. I began looking at the place that I lived in; throughout the seasons, and all of its changes in every type of light.

Once I recovered from my lung transplant surgery and regained the ability to move around and “see” photographically, I began photographing that space where I had lived; where I was confined.

This project is ongoing for almost 2 years as of this writing and will likely be continued for some time. It is a collection of images which capture the corners, and beauty of the space in which I live. There is a beauty all around us, even in the confined space of our home, regardless of how grand or simple."

I also did a two part workshop. First was a photo shoot with a stuffed model. We discussed:

• The "secret" to getting good looking star effects around points of light (narrow apertures in the f/22 ballpark).
• Shooting through bars at the zoo. They become less in-focus and easier to ignore the closer you get to them. Avoid shooting through a spot that the sun is hitting directly and you can almost ignore the bars altogether.
• Doing a portrait with a black background in a place that is well lit with an ugly background. To sum up... Switch to manual and set your exposure so things are more or less black when you take a photo. Then add a flash that shines only on your subject. It helps to be far away from any background walls. If the light spills over to the back wall, you can: Have the subject move farther from the wall, move the light closer to the subject, or change the angle of the light.

The second part of my demonstration focused on processing at the computer:

• For starry skies, add contrast and lots of clarity to make the stars pop.
• Don't underestimate how much you can bring a photo back if it's underexposed.
• Blend modes can be confusing, but are very worth getting familiar with what some of them do. Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Luminosity, Color. Those are the big ones. When my head isn't as confuddled, I'll do a blog on those someday.

May 1st!

The beginning of May has a lot going on:

• May 1 - Member Showcase to show things you want to show.
• May 1 - Entries due for the End of the Year (up to 2 images from earlier in the year in each of the usual categories).
• May 1 - Entries due for Pharmer (children) and Fowler (nature). Two submissions in each of these categories as well. Could have been submitted earlier in the year, but not also to this year's EoY. Can also be brand new material. Usual rules apply.
• April 30 to May 2 - Monday through Wednesday before the 1st Friday, so it's museum display time. Pick up the old. Drop off the new. Not exactly sure how it's working out, but it's being done with the museum staff so they should be able to guide us. I'd recommend just doing this when coming to the May 1 meeting, but there's plenty of drop off that's being done that night, I imagine you might have your arms full already.

TTFN