We had three speakers, plus a short piece from me at the end. The speakers were:
- Ali, who took us through the winning images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which is currently on show at the Natural History Museum until 30 June 2024. Ali stepped in at the last minute to give this talk and did a great job. We were shown the winners and runners up in all the seven categories and had time to discuss. Most of the images were excellent as we expected, and showed incredible scenes that we can only wonder at, but there were a few where we were not so sure. Thank you Ali for pulling this together. See https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery
- Steve showed us two of his favourite photographers. First Brooke Shaden. Brooke has been around for a few years now and has a very distinctive style. There is definitely a dark side to her photography, but very different and creative compositions. She appears as herself in all the photographs. See https://brookeshaden.com/gallery/. Also Steve showed us the work of Erik Johansson. These images have a surreal feel about them, and like Brooke Shaden's are full of imagination and creativity, pre-planned and staged in advance. These are not spontaneous images, they are full on productions. See https://www.erikjo.com/. Steve also recommended we visit the Hasselblad Masters site as a source of inspiration. I've taken a look and its worth a visit - see https://www.hasselblad.com/inspiration/masters/
- Gerry showed us an AV he has been working on. It was called 'A Note to HPS' and ran to the up beat music of 'Driven by You', by Queen. There is a message there. Gerry also spent some time explaining how the AV was produced in Photoshop and how the images can be faded in time with the music.
We held our Portfolio session with again some interesting images to share and discuss. I showed these in Lightroom which has the advantage of being able to quickly try out alternative edits suggested. We had nice work from Brian, Ali, Liz and a few from me.
With a spare 10 minutes at the end I showed the work of two artists I'd seen in the Biscuit Factory gallery in Newcastle. The first was an artist working with paint and the second working with textiles. Both produce abstract work which I thought was beautiful. The relevance to ESIG and photography is that this style of work is increasingly being produced by photographers. The 'straight' image is definitely not the norm any more.
Take a look at:
Lisa House, who produces abstract landscapes https://www.lisahouseartist.co.uk/ and Valerie Wartelle, who also produced abstract landscape like images, but out of textiles, including merino wool, silk, cotton and other materials. https://valeriewartelle.co.uk/
Finally, there was a request that we record the meetings in future which we all were happy to agree with.
Date of next meeting: Monday 27 November.
- Ali, who took us through the winning images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which is currently on show at the Natural History Museum until 30 June 2024. Ali stepped in at the last minute to give this talk and did a great job. We were shown the winners and runners up in all the seven categories and had time to discuss. Most of the images were excellent as we expected, and showed incredible scenes that we can only wonder at, but there were a few where we were not so sure. Thank you Ali for pulling this together. See https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery
- Steve showed us two of his favourite photographers. First Brooke Shaden. Brooke has been around for a few years now and has a very distinctive style. There is definitely a dark side to her photography, but very different and creative compositions. She appears as herself in all the photographs. See https://brookeshaden.com/gallery/. Also Steve showed us the work of Erik Johansson. These images have a surreal feel about them, and like Brooke Shaden's are full of imagination and creativity, pre-planned and staged in advance. These are not spontaneous images, they are full on productions. See https://www.erikjo.com/. Steve also recommended we visit the Hasselblad Masters site as a source of inspiration. I've taken a look and its worth a visit - see https://www.hasselblad.com/inspiration/masters/
- Gerry showed us an AV he has been working on. It was called 'A Note to HPS' and ran to the up beat music of 'Driven by You', by Queen. There is a message there. Gerry also spent some time explaining how the AV was produced in Photoshop and how the images can be faded in time with the music.
We held our Portfolio session with again some interesting images to share and discuss. I showed these in Lightroom which has the advantage of being able to quickly try out alternative edits suggested. We had nice work from Brian, Ali, Liz and a few from me.
With a spare 10 minutes at the end I showed the work of two artists I'd seen in the Biscuit Factory gallery in Newcastle. The first was an artist working with paint and the second working with textiles. Both produce abstract work which I thought was beautiful. The relevance to ESIG and photography is that this style of work is increasingly being produced by photographers. The 'straight' image is definitely not the norm any more.
Take a look at:
Lisa House, who produces abstract landscapes https://www.lisahouseartist.co.uk/ and Valerie Wartelle, who also produced abstract landscape like images, but out of textiles, including merino wool, silk, cotton and other materials. https://valeriewartelle.co.uk/
Finally, there was a request that we record the meetings in future which we all were happy to agree with.
Date of next meeting: Monday 27 November.
