We had three (plus one) speakers:
1. Vaughn's talk was called 'Travels with my iPhone, or Lockdown Miscellany' and showed the many places that Vaughn managed to visit when the Covid rules allowed. Taken mainly with the iPhone 5, we saw images from Devon, Aldborough, Cliveden, the Shuttleworth collection and Harpenden. Also some striking images of sunflowers and an ongoing project on water skiing. There was some technical debate about image quality of the iPhone 5 vs more recent models, but it did make the point that the best camera is the one you carry with you, which is typically your phone!
2. Peter (Wilson) took us through his analysis of paper quality including a blind test to assess the results. Peter printed off a test sheet on a variety of papers and asked three 'independent' viewers to rank the results. Here's the results:
1. Vaughn's talk was called 'Travels with my iPhone, or Lockdown Miscellany' and showed the many places that Vaughn managed to visit when the Covid rules allowed. Taken mainly with the iPhone 5, we saw images from Devon, Aldborough, Cliveden, the Shuttleworth collection and Harpenden. Also some striking images of sunflowers and an ongoing project on water skiing. There was some technical debate about image quality of the iPhone 5 vs more recent models, but it did make the point that the best camera is the one you carry with you, which is typically your phone!
2. Peter (Wilson) took us through his analysis of paper quality including a blind test to assess the results. Peter printed off a test sheet on a variety of papers and asked three 'independent' viewers to rank the results. Here's the results:
Permajet's Oyster came out on top, which is interesting because this is one of the least expensive papers in the group.
I asked you to send me your own personal paper recommendations. Iain suggested Bockingford (good for landscapes) and also thought Japanese Wasabi papers worth a try as being exceptional in their textures, from almost tissue weight to full cartridge weight. Greg regularly uses Permajet Fine Art Papyrus 300 and Museum Heritage 310gm. I always have Permajet Distinction in stock and often use this for B&W.
Thanks Peter for showing us your results and prompting a good discussion.
3. Finally I showed some work from my recent trip to Eigg with Bruce Percy. If you don't know Bruce take a look at his work here https://brucepercy.co.uk/ . Its very simple and minimalistic. Bruce is very focused on lines, shapes and particularly tonal relationships. I demonstrated Bruce's processing method which is 90% about selectively adjusting tones on different parts of the image. This is done my making an adjustment using Curves in Photoshop, looking at just the one area of the image of interest, and not worrying about how the adjustment affects the rest of the image. Then a mask is applied to mask out those areas of the image to which the adjustment should not be applied. This is then repeated multiple times until all the required adjustment are made. A very quick and simple approach.
4 We had an extra, unplanned little talk from John Mobbs. John had just completed his first video and showed us the results and the technical hurdles involved. Its clearly a whole new set of technology that needs to be mastered and John was embracing this with enthusiasm (I think). Thanks John, we look forward to seeing some more.
Finally we had our Portfolio Session, where this week we discussed 10 or so individual images. Always somethings interesting emerges.
Thanks to all for taking part this month. See you in February
I asked you to send me your own personal paper recommendations. Iain suggested Bockingford (good for landscapes) and also thought Japanese Wasabi papers worth a try as being exceptional in their textures, from almost tissue weight to full cartridge weight. Greg regularly uses Permajet Fine Art Papyrus 300 and Museum Heritage 310gm. I always have Permajet Distinction in stock and often use this for B&W.
Thanks Peter for showing us your results and prompting a good discussion.
3. Finally I showed some work from my recent trip to Eigg with Bruce Percy. If you don't know Bruce take a look at his work here https://brucepercy.co.uk/ . Its very simple and minimalistic. Bruce is very focused on lines, shapes and particularly tonal relationships. I demonstrated Bruce's processing method which is 90% about selectively adjusting tones on different parts of the image. This is done my making an adjustment using Curves in Photoshop, looking at just the one area of the image of interest, and not worrying about how the adjustment affects the rest of the image. Then a mask is applied to mask out those areas of the image to which the adjustment should not be applied. This is then repeated multiple times until all the required adjustment are made. A very quick and simple approach.
4 We had an extra, unplanned little talk from John Mobbs. John had just completed his first video and showed us the results and the technical hurdles involved. Its clearly a whole new set of technology that needs to be mastered and John was embracing this with enthusiasm (I think). Thanks John, we look forward to seeing some more.
Finally we had our Portfolio Session, where this week we discussed 10 or so individual images. Always somethings interesting emerges.
Thanks to all for taking part this month. See you in February
