Due to Covid-19 restrictions all club meetings were held via the Zoom conferencing system.
20 May – An excellent presentation by Polina Plotnikova Starting from a blank canvas – creative flower portraiture and still life. She describes her approach to flower portraiture as being similar to portrait photography. For every flower and plant she photographs she always try to find a unique look, study its mood and character and unlock its hidden beauty. In doing so, she neither aims at creating an accurate natural/botanical image nor tries to shoot a flower in its natural habitat. What matters to her is the creative interpretation of a flower image.
During the still life session she discussed composition, light, textures and colours when creating still life setups and how she always starts by creating an image in her mind’s eye before proceeding to take photographs only after all details have been thought through. With the aid of a few schematic illustrations she demonstrated the various stages of putting together a still life setup together with the studio hardware used.
20 May – The Best print and PDI competition was judged by Tony Baverstock. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic restrictions, we had no prints this year only PDIs. After holding seventeen images back for a second showing Tony selected Mike Hall’s image as the eventual competition winner. The full table of awards is shown in this table.
13 May – Members ably demonstrated their creative skills in interpreting the 3-of-a-kind challenge. Some photographed a single subject in three ways, for example by changing lighting for each image, using built-in camera filter functions or changing camera settings such as aperture/ISO to alter the visual dynamics of the photo. Others produced a triptych based on a single theme such as a public event, wall art, a flower taken at different times of day, or a subject viewed from various angles. Others used software packages to produce three interesting visual effects.
6 May – Due to Covid-19 travel and meeting restrictions we had to cancel the annual outside events competition. In its place members were asked to present up to four images taken during the past year. The judge, Dave Brooker, joined us to discuss the images and went on to show some photos he had taken during this time. He then demonstrated how he uses Affinity software by post processing a few of his own pictures.
An enjoyable evening where we learned how interesting subjects can still be found close to home – in your garden, on a local walk or in your house.
The above images, copyright of Polina Plotnikova and reproduced with permission, is a sample of her photography.
