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Issue 319
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12 January 20199
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To: Firstname Lastname
Your BPS Membership No:
Hello Firstname
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Next week we welcome an old friend of BPS, Colin Harrison FRPS FIPF FBPE MFIAP MPAGB EFIAP/d1 MPSA GPSA AWPF APAGB who will be presenting his talk called Colours of the Wind. This is an American themed evening when you can relax and enjoy a visual and musical tour of the South Western States of the USA visiting some familiar places like the misty atmosphere of Arizona’s Grand Canyon to the lesser known mining areas north of Death Valley. We will also be treated to a "World Premier" of Colin's recent projected image panel which gained him the |
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GPSA (Gold Photographic Society of America), the first person in the UK to be awarded it.
As you may gather from the string of letters after his name, Colin is no slouch when it comes to photography and is a well known speaker and judge on the UK club circuit, he also sits on the Licentiate, Associate and Fellowship (Fine Art) Panels for the Royal Photographic Society.
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Above are a couple of Colin's images from the talk. To see more of Colin's work and read a bit more about him, why not visit his website |
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All members of BPS are welcome to the Digital Group meeting on Monday 14 January. In the first half of the meeting we will look at images brought by you either to show off your work and share your techniques if you wish, or get helpful comments from others on how to improve your images. You may bring your images as prints or digital files (of any size in JPG format in a folder of your name on a memory stick) for projection.
In the second half we will have a demo by Mike Martin of some useful Photoshop retouching techniques including frequency separation. As you may know Mike has been doing very well in the club competitions and I am looking forward to seeing some of the secrets of his successes. You may remember that at the November meeting Andrew Whettam gave a wonderful presentation on Adobe Lightroom which is the preferred photo editing software for nearly half the BPS members. I was impressed by the style and clarity of his presentation and hoping to persuade him to explore Lightroom techniques further with BPS members in the near future – watch this space.
Ashwin Chauhan
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BPS member, John Hudson has had a successful week having had some of his images of Costa Rican bats published in the Daily Telegraph and in Fox News. Below is one of the images published, more of which can be found by following this link.
Well done John.
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Thoughts on Creativity
by
Bob Faris
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It was with great surprise that I heard that BPS Council wished to introduce a new competition, a CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHIC competition and I was even more surprised, and greatly honoured, when invited to sponsor it.
Furthermore, I have been invited to give my thoughts on the formation of the competition, it's rules and conditions. I will admit here, that since I have spent some 45 years pursuing creative photography, I have rather strong views as to WHAT IS and WHAT IS NOT, CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY.
At this point I am going to quote what my dictionary says on the matter.
'CREATE – to cause to come into existence.'
'CREATIVE – characterised by originality or thought – having or showing imagination – designed to or tending to stimulate the imagination.'
Note – there is nothing in the dictionary about simply ALTERING.
Creative characteristics evolve in one’s mind, they are not produced by a computer. Perhaps one needs a creative GENE.
It is also important not to ignore the fact that the competition is to be for creative PHOTOGRAPHY. If so, I believe that one's final competition image should be predominantly photographic with minimal computer intervention.
Having read this far you have probably come to the conclusion that I have an anti-digital manipulation complex and just want to prevent computer workers from entering the competition. NOT SO, I look upon the introduction of the computer as probably the greatest step forward in photography since its earliest days. The thing is, the computer is a wonderful TOOL that can be told, or made to do wonderful things, but it does not have a brain that gives it original thought.
Using the computer is the norm and almost essential in general photography these days but when you come to CREATIVE photography you must put on a different hat and use your digital skills purely as tools in order to gradually build / compose your photographic images into one new photograph.
If you have never tried to think/employ PHOTOGRAPHIC CREATIVITY and ask 'How do I start?' I would suggest you look through your collection of photos and pick out some that are reasonably exposed but perhaps are lacking something interesting, perhaps a good sky. Now go through your collection again and pick out pictures that do 'contain' interesting/amusing elements - cats, dogs, penguins, people, buildings, cars, boats, good skies, in fact anything of real interest, then put them into a file perhaps called 'Cut-outs'. Now put on your 'Thinking Cap' and ask yourself 'Would any of these cut-outs go into one of the photos that I first selected?' Supposing you have a photo of a street market with a fish stall in the foreground and in your 'Cut-outs' file you have a Zoo picture featuring a Seal. Could you make a better picture by importing the Seal into the street market picture? OK, first cut-out your seal and transfer it on a layer into the street market picture then use the re-size, lighten or darken and blending tools as necessary and position your seal where you think best. That would be enough to claim that you have composed a CREATIVE photograph. It would certainly be almost 100% photography and it would certainly be unique.
You succeed in this your first trial and are pleased with your picture, you are keen to do better. You start looking for pictures and elements that would put together to make other unique pictures. There is no better way of passing away the long dark winter evenings than by creating from those you have already taken during the past summers. Those of you who like lots of letters after your name, should not ignore the fact that many foreign Salons love our creative photos and seem to be generous with gold medals.
BPS is now one of the foremost photographic societies in the country due to its well-run Salon and to its wonderful Club Rooms. We now have a wealth of great photographic talent amongst our regular competition entrants, so might we take the lead in promoting a high level of real and CREATIVE photography? I like to think that we might become the Country's Centre of Excellence for the learning and practice of really CREATIVE photography.
As to the competition, I think it should be:
- For both Projected Images and Prints together in one competition
- Open to all with no Classes
- The trophy to be won only once by any competitor
- Judges to be drawn from known good Creative Workers
- An entry to consist of a maximum of three pictures
- An entry may be mixed PI's and/or Prints
Bob Faris FRPS
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For those of you who aren't too sure what the Bristol Salon is: it is an international photographic exhibition that has been running since the mid-1940s and is the largest exhibition of its type in the UK attracting entries from nearly 70 different countries. Entrants may submit up to 16 images across 4 sections (Open, Monochrome, Photo Travel and Nature) which are put before a panel of selectors who pick the top 20% to 30% or so to be accepted. Entry for BPS members is free as long as we receive your entry before 19 January, after that you will have to pay the full fee.
To help you with your entry there is a small tutorial that can be downloaded by following this link. When entering, be sure to tick the box on the first page of the entry system to say that you are a BPS member and fill in your BPS membership number which you will find at the top of this newsletter; when you get to the payment page at the end, click ALREADY PAID.
Here's hoping that we see a rush of entries, but in the meantime if you have any queries, feel free to email me at chairman@bristolsalon.co.uk
Full details can found on the BPS website
All the best
Pete Howell & the Salon Team
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It is time to again remind that members that phones are not allowed during meetings. Would members please desist from using their phones during meetings and either switch them to silent or better still, switch them off. It is important to realise that it is not just the ring tones that annoy, the bright light from phone screens is extremely annoying to those sitting nearby, especially on projected image evenings when the room is dark - so no note taking, game playing or texting during meetings please - leave that until after the meeting.
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Gordon Stirrat thought that members might like to know that, following the recent successful Christmas social, he was given some surplus food to pass on to a charity that helps feed the homeless. The charity with which Gordon is associated, Crisis Centre Ministries, had more donations than it could cope with this Christmas for both the Wild Goose Café and its food banks, so he took it to the Salvation Army who were very grateful and said that they would distribute it among the homeless later that day.
A big thank you to everyone involved.
Apologies to Gordon for not reproducing this last week, but problems with the newsletter meant that most things had to take a back seat - Ed
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DPIC
The WCPF Interclub Digital Projected Image Competition (DPIC) is being held at Exeter on 10 February. Tickets are now on sale and can be found on-line by following this link - (selling fast, so get your skates on!)
This event is usually very poorly supported by BPS members, with the majority of those who go being from the Salon Committee. It would be really great if other members could support BPS and go to Exeter on the 10th.
MEMBERS' EXHIBITION
Please note, the closing date for the annual WCPF Members' Exhibition is drawing near, 4 March. This is an exhibition that is open to all members of WCPF affiliated clubs (BPS is one of those) and is for both prints and PDIs. For full information, visit the WCPF website.
WCPF VACANCIES
We have received the following impassioned plea from the WCPF:
Message to all WCPF club members
Your club is a member of the WCPF, the regional federation that links your club to the PAGB. This allows club members to apply for PAGB awards, and for your club to access the public liability insurance at preferential rates.
The WCPF arranges the lecturers and judges that form an integral part of the club programmes, and organises regional competitions such as DPIC, the Members’ Exhibition, the AV Competition, Kingswood Salver and Knightshayes Trophy.
For all of the above to take place, an Executive Committee take on board the tasks of organising each activity, with the elected officers each having responsibility for one or more of the tasks.
Currently, there are a number of posts on the Executive committee vacant, and despite pleas at the AGM and before, no-one has offered to take them on board. In particular, the WCPF desperately needs a Secretary. Diana Wynn has been in this role for a number of years, and stood down at the AGM in 2016. She very kindly offered to continue to cover the role until someone else took over, but as yet no-one has volunteered. This leaves us in something of a crisis, as without a Secretary the WCPF cannot continue to exist and will have to be dissolved at the AGM next October, leaving all of our clubs in something of a vacuum.
Additionally, the roles of DPIC Secretary and Travelling Exhibition Secretary still need to be filled. At the last AGM in October 2018, the Executive recommended discontinuing the Travelling Exhibition, but the member clubs voted for it to continue. This can only happen if someone is prepared to take over the responsibility of running it, otherwise it would have to close down.
There are approximately 4,500 individual club members within the WCPF, so I am appealing to each of you to think about taking on one of the vacant Executive roles to enable the federation to continue. There will be plenty of support from the rest of the Executive Committee, and help will be provided at all times. None of the roles require a massive time commitment.
If you would like more information about what each role entails, please send me an email at the address below.
Many thanks
Ian Bateman FRPS MPAGB AV-AFIAP MPAGB.
President - Western Counties Photographic Federation
If you would like to volunteer your services as a result of reading this, please contact Ian directly.
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Download the latest edition of PAGB eNews by clicking here.
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Travel Photographer of the Year
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Well done to Sue O'Connell, who has done particularly well in the 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year contest. Sue's panel of images, featuring the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Oman, was Commended in the Faces, People, Culture category of TPOTY. The images can be viewed in the Winners Gallery on the TPOTY website: (keep scrolling down till you come to the Faces, People, Culture section). Photographers from 142 countries submitted over 20,000 images for TPOTY 2018. According to the website, the winners represent a collection of world-class contemporary travel photography shot on everything from high-end professional cameras to mobile phones.
Winning images will be exhibited in Spring 2019 at London Bridge City, and at TPOTY exhibitions internationally, including the Xposure International Photography Festival in Sharjah and Dubai.
Sue's winning images are reproduced below;
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Kingswood Photographic Society
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BPS members are invited to join Kingswood Photographic Society at St Barnabas Church Hall, Church Avenue, Warmley, Bristol BS30 5JJ on Friday 25 January at 7.30pm for an evening with Nick Upton. Nick is a multi award-winning Wildlife Photographer and former Wildlife Film Director. Nick's talk will be in two parts. The first covering Wildlife Conservation Photography in the South West and in the second part Nick will talk about photographing Nature all around us. There is a small charge of £3.00 for visitors.
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Salon acceptances: BPS photographers are now achieving large numbers of salon acceptances and constraints on time and space mean we can't include them all. So please only advise of awards or other milestones.
Contrary to popular belief, I do not possess psychic powers and need you to tell me if you've had successes. If you want to blow your own trumpet (or someone else's), then this is the place to do it. Please let me know and I'll include details in a future issue.
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Would all members please note: before you plan your shoot and book your model, you should check whether the studio/clubroom will be free. This can be done easily and at any time by viewing the Clubroom Bookings calendar in the Members' Area of the BPS Website. Bookings can (and must) be made by contacting Mike Bigger at bookings@bristolphoto.org.uk.
Log in details to the Members' Area are at the end of this newsletter.
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Please don't forget that if you change your address (home or email), or gain additional photographic distinctions, it would be appreciated if you could let the Membership Secretary know so that she can keep her records up to date, this will also ensure that you continue to receive your newsletters - please email all changes to membership@bristolphoto.org.uk
The distinctions we have on record are those shown at the top of this newsletter, if they are wrong, please let Carol know.
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For those of you who aren't sure what MPAGB, EFIAP/s and many more such seemingly random collections of letters mean, just click here to download the list.
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If you have anything you think other members would like to know about, such as special events, exhibitions, photographic hints and tricks, etc. please let me know at bpsnewsletter@bristolphoto.org.uk
PLEASE NOTE: ALL COPY TO BE WITH THE EDITOR BY MIDNIGHT THURSDAY TO ALLOW FOR PUBLICTAION (HOPEFULLY) ON FRIDAY MORNING
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Missed a Copy of the Newsletter?
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To view past editions of this Newsletter, please click on the following link and then select the date(s) you are looking for - BPS Newsletter Archive
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BPS Website - Members' Area "Log in"
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To enter the Members' Area of the BPS website you will need the following:
User Name - chatroom Password - pixels
If you have any problems getting into the Members' Area, please contact Carol, either by email: membership@bristolphoto.org.uk or by telephone: 0117 924 1338
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Bristol Photographic Society,
Unit 13, Montpelier Central, Station Rd, Bristol, BS6 5EE
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