Quinebaug Valley Photography Club

Whether you agreed with her or not, Drea Koval of Southeastern Camera Club, gave us in-depth critiques for each of the entries in last nights’ competition.  Newer members, and our 3 visitors, as well as the camera club veterans  picked up valuable information from Drea’s remarks on every image.   It was a relaxed evening with time to spare before our 9:00 pm curfew!

Some housekeeping notes during the meeting portion of the evening:

• NECCC Fall Print competition was held Nov 4th….we should have the results  soon.

• NECCC Fall Digital competition…entries were sent for the Nov 18th judging in Framingham, MA. Here is the address of Boston West Photography Club if you are interested in attending the judging… Marist House, 518 Pleasant St., Framingham at 7:30 pm. The following club members have images in that competition:  Harriett Cotnoir, Lois Latraverse, Bill Marchand, Marcia Kilpatrick, Chris Atsales, Lori Labrecque and Jim Cutler.   These entries were selected on October 30th by the attendees at the selection meeting. (Remember that all club members are invited and encouraged to attend QVPC selection meetings.  We welcome varied and open opinions and we all wear thick skin for these events so you are free to share your constructive views.

• We urged members to view Carol Dunn’s website, www.caroldunnart.com, to view her many talents as an artist, photograher, printer, etc.   We are looking forward to her program on November 17th.

• Themes for December’s competition are Harvest and Festival.

• Our next selection night for the Winter Print and Digital competitions will be held in early January….a date to be announced.   Also, prior to that meeting, there will be an officer’s meeting.

November 6th, 2009 | Category: Minutes | Leave a comment

1)  A tripod is a must.

2) Your distance to the waterfall can determine the shutter speed to use.  A greater distance requires a much slower shutter speed to create the nice milky effect.  If close, start with 1/15th of a second….if far, start with 1 second.  Adjust until you get the effect you are looking for.

3)Overcast skies are the best time to shoot waterfalls.  However, dark clouds or deep shade will render a bluish tinge to your image.  You can use a warming filter to counteract or adjust white balance in post processing.

4)If possible, avoid sunlit portions of the falls to avoid over exposure and omit the sky for the same reason.

5)Meter the frothiest part of the falls (usually the brightest) and set your exposure to over-expose that part of the falls by 1/2 stop.

6)Composition works well if you try to include contrasting background to accentuate the falls.

7)Include a “subject” or point of interest in the foreground and use the  falls as the background.

Shoot the scene at different shutter speeds to yield different effects.

A little info….the human eye and brain perceives motion at somewhere around 1/60 second.  If you were to photograph a waterfall in 35mm format with a 50mm lens at 1/60 second, the degree of implied motion would be the same as seen with the naked eye.  Every speed slower than 1/60 second, with the same equipment, would imply great motion.  At 1/15 second, a vertical falls shot a few feet away from the lens will veil nicely.  At 1/4 second, it will appear cotton-like and at 1 second or slower, it will be “smokin”!

Now….grab that camera and have some fun!   A local place to practice….Cargill Falls in Putnam, or Cat Hollow in Dayville.

Cargill Falls is on Route 44 in the center of Putnam.  Cat Hollow is a short distance off Route 12 in Dayville.  Going South on Route 12 from the center of Dayville, take the 1st left after the Dayville Post Office.  The parking area for Cat Hollow Park is a very short distance on the right.  Walk the paved walkway for about 100 yeards, you can walk across the dam and photograph the waterfall from the banks of the river.

If you know of other local places, please share by commenting on this tip!

November 2nd, 2009 | Category: Tips | Leave a comment

Our judge for the evening will be Drea Koval from Southeastern Camera Club.   Categories are Color Print, Black and White, and Creative/Artistic.   There is no theme competition on Print Competition nights.

Members and guests are invited to enter the competition.  Just a reminder that entries should be matted, backed with a backing mount, and labeled with the photographer’s name, category entered, and title of the image.   Entry size can be from a minimum of 4 x 6 to a maximum of 16 x 20 matted.

Check out our tips page…..will try to add at least 1 new tip a month…maybe more!  You can find it by clicking the down arrow on the Categories.

November 2nd, 2009 | Category: Minutes | Leave a comment

We had a full house last evening for our first digital competition of the 2009-2010 season.  Angelo Marinosci, Jr of Warren, RI was our excellent judge for the evening.  While we didn’t get the individual critiques that we so treasure from him, he did demonstrate which images  best answered the questions:

• What is my subject?
• When am I photographing this subject?
• What are you going to do with it?  Or what does this image say?

Good photography demands emotion…a reason to view it and something the viewer can take away from it.  Not easy to accomplish for all of us but something to strive for.  At least that is what I took away from our evening competition.

Angelo will host a spring field trip when we will spend the morning walking with him in his quaint lovely village of Warren.  Details will come later in the year but we’re looking at late April or early May.  It will be our chance to get some onsite tips.

October 2nd, 2009 | Category: Minutes | Leave a comment

Angelo is back!   Don’t miss out on our October competition.  Angelo Marinosci, Jr., for those just checking our website, is a Rhode Island artist, musician, educator, radio DJ, and fabulous photographer.  He has a knack for telling the truth without injuring anyone’s thin skin or sense of self as a photographer!  I suspect his skill for positive critiques comes from being critiqued himself over his artistic lifetime.

This is our first digital only competition.  The categories are Color Digital, Black and White Digital,  Creative Digital and Theme.  The themes this month are attitude and camera. As usual in print competitions, you may enter 2 images in each category.

For further information or questions, contact us at info@quinebaugvalleyphoto.com.

September 22nd, 2009 | Category: Minutes | Leave a comment

Bob Fedder of Southeastern Camera Club presented, with knowledge and humor, a detailed macro program complete with powerpoint lecture, a display of suggested lenses and accessories that can be used with macro photography, and completed the evening with hands on trial and error.  We had calla lilies and day lilies to work with under lighting provided by Bob.  Other club members also brought floral arrangements for everyone to work with.

Some basic macro facts:

• When using your macro lens remember the larger the magnification, the less depth of field (DOF) you will have.

• By increasing your f stop you  increase your DOF BUT each increase in f stop  doubles your shutter speed requirement.

• Use a tripod, cable release and mirror lock up to achieve sharpness.  Another helpful tool is a focusing rail which allows you to move the camera up to 12″ forward and back without moving the tripod.  Focusing rails come in various styles and price ranges.

• Increase external light by using reflectors, lamps, ringlight

• Macro lenses have a short minimum focusing distance meaning the distance from the front of the lens to the subject.   For example a 50mm macro lens focuses 1.6 inches from the subject, a 105mm lens 4.7 inches and a 180mm lens 9.1.  So you can see that the higher mm lens allows you to be further from your subject.

• You can multiply the focal length by adding a teleconverter.  This allows you to also increase your distance from the subject and the reproduction ratio.  However,  you lose 2 f stops of light.

These are just some of the highlights of Thursday night’s program.  Any club member may request to borrow the powerpoint presentation for review.  Contact:  Lois Latraverse

The evening ended a little past 9:15.

Quick Addition: See Dang Photo for some awesome macro images. Tom is a good friend, a superb photographer and has forgotten more stuff than most of us will ever learn. He has a good forum where friendly people answer all questions. (Edit: Karen Leaf)

Reproduction Ration=focal length of lens ∕ amount of extension

September 20th, 2009 | Category: Minutes | Leave a comment

TIPS:

1) With image open in Photoshop, at the top of your screen, go to “image”. Click to open the drop down box, slide down to “resize”. Slide over and click on ” image size”.

2) A box opens. At the bottom of the drop down box there are 3 check boxes, “scale styles, constrain proportions and resample image”. Make sure all 3 are checked. Then look where it says “resolution”. If that number is 300, change it to 72. Then look at the upper portion of the drop down box, under Pixel Dimensions, to see what the dimensions are. If your image is horizontal make sure the width is 1024 or lower. If you have a vertical image, make sure the number is 768 or lower. To change those numbers highlight the number with your mouse then type in the desired number.

3) If your image resolution is 72 when you open the size box, change the pixel dimensions to 1024 for a horizontal image or 768 for the vertical image.

4) Notice that the original inch size of the image does not change. If you see a change in the inch size…something was done wrong. Do not save when you close the image. Reopen and try again.

5) IMPORTANT: DO NOT ‘SAVE’!! Use SAVE AS to a different folder! If you just save, you will be over writing your original photo! Make a separate folder (QVPC for instance) and save all submissions in this folder!!!

September 8th, 2009 | Category: Tips | Leave a comment

Our first competition of the 2009-2010 season went very well.  Jim Dionne of Meriden was our judge and he used his tremendous knowledge and years of judging experience to offer excellent critiques with helpful hints to improve our photography. Winners have been posted to the website…click on the tab above for 2009-2010 competition winners to see who received the points for the evening.  Winning images will be added soon.

Discussion at the meeting prior to the competition included:

1) Distribution of professionally created and printed posters to publicize our club. Members are seeking places to hang the posters in their respective towns.  Our thanks to Karen Leaf for the poster design.

2) Distribution of business cards advertising the club, meeting times and dates, website and email address.

3) Discussion on Woodstock Fair moon shot field trip for Sept 4th….meeting at 6:15 in the parking lot directly across from the main entrance to the Fair.

4) Decided to enter NECCC color print competition.  Deadline for submission of entries is Oct 28th.  We will enter both Nature and Open.  We had a good start for the open category with the winners of September’s prints.

5) Would all nature shooters look through your archives for images that have not been entered in any NECCC competition.  We need 4 images from 4 makers.

6) We will be scheduling a selection night for this competition in late September.  More details to follow.

7) Karen and Lois are putting in time to make the website useful to members as well as new folks checking us out.  Please be patient as we are not experts and we are trying to work with the software as best we can.  Format may not be pleasing but hopefully the content will be helpful!

Coming in future months (we hope) are columns of interest written by members.  Perhaps a computer lesson, Photoshop technique, HDR (High Dynamic Range), a favorite local place to travel for shooting, etc.  We would like to make this website work for members and become a place to visit frequently.  We can’t do it without your participation.

9) If you want to write something for the web please do and then email it to info@quinebaugvalleyphoto.com.  We welcome your suggestions.

Lois Latraverse, President

September 4th, 2009 | Category: Minutes | Leave a comment

All skill levels are welcome to attend and learn the ins and outs of macro photography.  We are excited to have our friend and fellow camera club enthusiast, Robert Fedder of Southeastern Camera Club presenting a short power point program.  Bring your camera and tripod and be prepared to have some fun while learning valuable techniques to improve your close up photography.  Setups will be provided but if you have one of your own that you would like to photograph….bring it along!

September 2nd, 2009 | Category: Programs | Leave a comment