Here's a brief reminder of what we covered at our Sept ESIG meeting, but if you want to see the whole thing, then here's a recording https://youtu.be/v-pmrEaKuiI.

Present: Brian, Gerry, Judith, Dries, Steve, Peter 
Apologies from:  Liz, Mark, Ali, Jackie, Gia, Greg, Hannah.

Last season we changed our meeting date to the 4th Monday in the month, but in practice this doesn't work for a number of our regulars.  Would the 2nd Tuesday in the month be better. Please let me know if you could make this.

We had three speakers:

Peter Whitehead kicked off the evening with photographs of bears, wolves and wolverines, taken on a workshop in northern Finland, close to the Russian border. The workshop was run by Richard Peters - see https://www.richardpeters.co.uk/wildlife-photography-workshops/finnish-summer-predators/.  Great photos, some real close ups right just there in front of the camera.  But I think the photo we will all remember is of the 5 star hide  - not much more than a large garden shed, with viewing positions on one side and bunk beds on the other!  Peter spent several night here with the other workshop attendees.

Gerry followed with some photos of St Albans Cathedral.  He explained how he was exploring the light, and there was certainly some great lighting effects.  But Gerry gave us the profound thought that he was 'not photographing the light, but was photographing the dark.'  That's worth thinking about.

I finished off the talks by showing the work of two photographers that I have recently added to 'my favourites'.  I found these via Photosnack, which sends me a daily email with a recommended photographer - sign up here if you're interested https://www.photosnack.email/.

The first photographer was Jonquin Pastor Genzor - see https://joakkin.com/. Jonquin is a street photographer, very much using the light and positioning people as elements in the composition rather than the main subject.
The second photographer was very different.   Reuben Njaa work is characterised by highly saturated intense colours - see https://reubennjaa.com/projects.  The subject matter is varied from abstracts, derelict buildings  to cityscapes.  Very different but our views were mixed.

Finally we had the Portfolio review with a reduced number of images, but still a good discussion.

Present:  Steve, Gerry, Judith, Brian, David, Liz, Mark, Peter W, Peter S, Iain, Vaughn.
Apologies:  Julie, Greg, Ali, Paul, Gia
 
Here's a few notes from last night's ESIG, and a recording for those that could not attend - https://youtu.be/XLpxPq9SvHk
 
We had three speakers as follows:
 
Mark showed us the work of the wildlife photographer, Racheal Bigsby - see https://www.rachelbigsby.com/. Rachal is making a name for herself working with some high profile sponsors and winning awards in prestigious exhibitions. Her approach definitely leans towards the artistic image, rather than showing the wildlife in the environment. This led to some interesting discussion within the group. Excellent work.
 
David showed us some images from a documentary project he is working on to create environmental portraits of violin maker and friend John Dilworth. The project is not yet complete, and John is working on his final violin so the pressure is on. David asked for our thoughts and ideas on how he might progress with the project. The overwhelming view was that the images have to tell the whole story, so if at all possible more images need to be taken of the construction of the violin through to completion. Some further ideas on how the work could be presented included accompanying words, in the form of a book maybe, and even the sound of the violin playing in an AV. It would be great if David could return to ESIG at some future date and show us the completed project.
 
I then showed images from the 2023 London Salon of Photography exhibition - see https://thelondonsalon.org/109th-exhibition-2023-medal-winners/. The London salon is now in its 110th year and is held in high regard. It is an independent exhibition and not part of the many salons run by the PAGB, FIAP or BPE. It is run by 'the members' who are recruited by invitation only. Some of the members are well known in the camera club world and include for example Hugh Milsom, Irene Froy, Colin Westgate, Chris Palmer, Stephen Le Provost, and others. There was a great variety of work shown and I think we all liked some, and disliked others. Our views were mixed and we didn't always agree - which is as it should be.
 
Our portfolio session was down in number but produced plenty to talk about. The most animated discussion was started by Gerry when he showed a photograph of the Iceland volcano, taken from his television. Gerry had merged a couple of images but the question was whether the result was his own image, or the work of another. We didn't come to a conclusion. My thoughts were that it is the work of another person, but there are arguments both ways.
 
Thanks for another entertaining evening.

Thanks to those that managed to attend our ESIG this week. A few of you have emailed me to say how much you enjoyed it, which is great - thank you.  Here's the recording of the meeting - https://youtu.be/QrtgZk6U5ac
 
We had two speakers:
 
Brian took us through a selection of the award winners from the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition (IGPOTY). I think we were surprised by the number of categories offered, not all of them having an obvious link to gardens. Our feeling was that the organisers have increased the categories to boost the number of entries. We had doubts about some of the winners, particularly in Abstract for example, but that said, there were some beautiful images on show and well worth reviewing again here - https://igpoty.com/garden-photography-winners/.
 
Well done Brian for your Finalist Award in the 'Discovery in Cambridge University Botanic Garden' category.
 
I then showed the work of an American photographer, Cole Thompson. Cole is self taught and claims his qualifications are his images. We looked particularly at his ‘eye and vision’ gallery which showed examples of images before and after post processing. This was Jackie’s suggestion (good idea) and generated lots of discussion. Cole converts all his images into black and white, and uses just a few Photoshop tools to significantly alter the brightness and contrast of selective parts of the images. See here - https://colethompsonphotography.com/home/eye-vs-vision/. Take a look also at the ‘Story behind the images' gallery, where Cole gives an audio description of the story behind a number of his images - see https://colethompsonphotography.com/story-behind-the-image/
 
Cole is an advocate of of ‘Vision driven Photography’ and promotes this approach at every opportunity. I’ve always found this elusive concept, but Cole has written an interesting blog post on the subject. See ‘How I Found My Vision’ - see https://colethompsonphotography.com/2014/05/09/finding-vision/
 
One of the steps Cole suggests to help us find our own personal vision is to select a number of our very favourite images from our back catalogue and then, Cole argues, these will in effect reflect our own Vision. The blog post explains in more detail, but I invite you to have a go at this and show us your results at our next meeting. This could generate an interesting discussion.
 
Our Portfolio session this month produces some imaginative images (Gerry’s bombing raid and Paul’s boat) and some images of the highest quality. Excellent. I feel sure that HPS is producing work that is certainly up to the standard of the big exhibitions. Something to aim for.
 
Our next meeting will be on 22nd April. I don't have any speakers lined up at the moment, so please step forward.

Thanks to all who managed to attend our ESIG meeting on Monday - here's a link to the recording  https://youtu.be/gqmF4aG8z70

Present: Peter W, Gerry and Judith, Gia, Brian, Malcolm, Liz, Jackie, Steve, Iain, Vaughn and me.
Apologies: Ali, Greg, Julie, Mark and Marianne. If I've missed anyone, then my apologies.

We had two speakers, rather than three. Unfortunately we ran out of time for Brian's talk, but we'll have Brian up first for the March meeting.

Liz gave us an extensive review of the Minimalist Photography Awards 2023 - see https://minimalistphotographyawards.com/. I really like this type of photography and I sense its gaining in popularity at the moment. I've been book marking a few photographers lately and enjoy their work. See for example Guido Klumpe (https://www.guido-klumpe.de/?lang=en) and Maarten Rots (https://www.maartenrots.nl/). Liz took us through the winners of most of the award categories and encouraged discussion. There was a debate about what minimalist means and whether all the examples were in fact minimalist. Some images were great, some less so. I think at the end we had a split vote, with some of us finding this type of photography inspiring, but others not so sure. Liz thanks for a thought provoking presentation.

Peter W took us on a trip down memory lane. Peter has started a project documenting his favourite locations from his home county of Yorkshire. Peter was born in York and has walked extensively in the county. The photographs were all of the countryside, with rolling hills and enticing paths. The iconic Flying Scotsman was shown steaming over the Ribblehead viaduct. Peter has given himself another 18 months or so to finish the project and to hopefully produce a book. We look forward to seeing the final result.

Our Portfolio session was down on numbers a bit this month, but included some interesting images and discussion.

Our next meeting will be on 25 March.

Attendees: Brian, Gerry, Judith, Mark, Peter W, Julie, Greg, Jackie, Liz, Gia, Vaughn and me.
Apologies from Ali.

We had three talks planned, but ended up with two due to technical problems with zoom. These are now resolved as explained below.

Judith was first up with something very different. Judith is not only an excellent photographer, with her own distinctive style, but also we discovered not a bad artist. Judith showed us some drawings she's made some years back all associated with the TV series Dr Who. I thought they were excellent and showed a real level of skill way above the average sketcher. But Judith story was also interesting. She had been commissioned to draw the Dr Who characters for one of the magazines, had met the TV actors at various conventions, and was even asked for her autograph by 'adoring fans'. Well done Judith! It makes me wonder what other skills members of ESIG have that just haven't been mentioned - music maybe?
 
Our second talk was meant to be given by Liz on the Minimalist Photography Awards. This didn't happen because of a technical problem with Mac sharing screens on Zoom. Despite our best efforts we could not solve this problem on the night, and lost a bit of time. However, thanks to input from Mark and Steve, we have the solution. It seems that the more recent operating systems on Mac require specific privacy permission to be given. You can see the detail here, and if you're running Mac you might like to grant these permissions to avoid future problems.
 
https://blogs.chapman.edu/academics/2021/09/06/i-updated-my-mac-and-cant-share-my-screen-in-zoom/
 
I've since listened to Liz's presentation and found it genuinely inspiring. We'll see it at the February meeting.
 
Finally Brian showed us some abstract images taken with his iPhone. Brian gets better and better at producing these and we saw some really interesting (and beautiful) work. Brian uses the app called 'Slow shutter speed'.
 
Our portfolio session produced a good range of images and enjoyable discussion. Dahlia's featured strongly from Brain and Liz, depicting record sleeves from Gerry, Peter W's award winning stag, an excellent gorilla from Julie, unusually a ICM shot of Stockholm shore line from Greg, landscape from Mark, both in colour and B&W, and we were split as to which we preferred, and a beautifully composed shot of the Golden Temple in Japan from Gia. I brought up the tail with a portrait of a traveler going home on a bus. We were treated to a good variety of images which was both enjoyable and I'm sure helped to widen 'the way we see'.
 
Thanks to all who took part.
 
Our next meeting will be on 26th Febuary.

Thanks to those who attended ESIG this week, I thought it was a particularly good session and a great start to our new season. We recorded the meeting and here's a link if you couldn't attend. https://youtu.be/Nnj2vYT-Gmk?feature=shared

And here's a few notes including names and links that came up during the evening.

Talks

We had three excellent talks:

1: Peter Whitehead talk was called 'Chalk', which initially got us thinking a bit. The title referred to chalk in the geological sense and its distribution across largely South East of the UK. Peter recommended a book by Chris Summerville, entitled 'Walking the Bones of Britain' and also a collection of photographs by Finn Hobson, see https://www.finnhopson.com/fieldwork. Peter's presentation showed photographs taken on his walk from just outside Winchester to Eastbourne, taking in the south Downs. The photographs were influenced by Finn's work.

2. Brian: Flower ICM Photography. Brian showed us some really excellent flower photographs taken with his iPhone using the App Slow Shutter. Brian explained that he had made several trip to Aylett's garden centre in St Albans and taken many many photographs of various flowers. His technique was to shoot at around 1/4 to 1/20th sec, moving the camera with a small circular motion. Brian reduced the photographs down into three panels of six. Each photograph was edited in Lightroom, where the flower was selected to give more impact and the background darken and soften. The panels were excellent and some of the individual photographs were really strong. Well done Brian.

3. Dries introduced us to a new photographer, Jenny Boot. See https://www.riseart.com/artist/65133/bootjenny. Jenny produces large photographs in the style of the old masters, using chiaroscuro style of lighting. Looking closely at the photographs Jenny introduces modern (and unpleasant) items into the compositions, like cigarettes or syringes, which gave a contemporary 'edginess' to the images. Interesting work worth a look.

Portfolio session

The portfolio session was special because everyone participated, so thank you all for your contributions. I'll not go through each one, but their was a variety of very nice work. Jackie showed some highly coloured abstract work using her phone and the 'Photo Split' app.

Meeting Dates

Tuesday's are not so convenient for me now, so after a bit of discussion we agreed to make our regular meeting on the fourth Monday of each month. But we will check at each meeting that this is convenient for everyone, and if necessary change the date month-by-month.

So the next meeting will be on 23rd October.

Here's my brief summary of last week's ESIG, just to remind you what we covered.

We had 12 attend the meeting and 3 apologies, so I feel we're finishing the season with around 15 active members which is a good number. Thank you.

We had planned three talks, but the technology gremlins reduced this to two.

Iain was on first with some of his favourite street photographs. There were shots I remember from some time back, but also some new ones. I particularly liked the parking ticket shot. So simple, and attractive colour contrast.

Gerry attempted to show his new Iceland AV (which I've seen and enjoyed). But although we could see the visuals, Gerry couldn't get the sound to work, so we had to abandon. The good news is that Gerry has since found the button in Zoom that allows for sound, so we'll be seeing the AV sometime next season.

Steve then gave a very comprehensive presentation about his experience of using AI. This included a review of competing products (there are more out there than I realised), examples of images that have been in the media recently, including the one that won the photo competition in Australia, and of Donald Trump being arrested (all fake - obviously). But I was most taken with the examples Steve had generated of Godfrey's Fish and Chip shop, in the style of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and also of Donald Trump dancing in front of the Eiffel Tower. You can see Steve's presentation in Dropbox here. https://www.dropbox.com/s/qv9fkbp75sepp8f/AI%20Midjourney.pdf?dl=0

Then followed our Portfolio session as usual.

We finished off the meeting with a discussion of the format of ESIG and whether we should change anything. Apparently not. You made positive comments at the meeting and separately I've received similar comments from others by email. So thankyou - 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'

After the meeting Dries emailed me saying he'd like to talk about a new photographer he has discovered named Jenny Boot - see here https://www.jennyboot.nl/bio/. We'll hopefully have Dries on for the September meeting, but please take an early look.

The next meeting will be on 26th September, but I'll confirm nearer the time.