Friday, July 31, 2009

Oops!

I'm off to a less than flying start. I mentioned two of our members doing well, but got the the first name wrong on one of them. We DO have a Marty Hipsky, we don NOT have an Alan......age comes so quickly!

NECCC and BSF & Stuff

Ok, I'm going to give this blog thing another try. I've got to be wary of sliding into 21st century technology lest I just become another tweet--er.

I wanted to share a couple observations from the New England Camera Club Council Conference. First, this year they had a few presenters who are from New England and are members of camera clubs in this region. Though I've not met any of them I do know of them. The thing I appreciate most is the recognition of the excellent photographic talent we have in this region, and how well they share their expertise. I was not disappointed with their effort.

Second, the tenor of the programs was oriented less towards software and more towards image making, travel, night photography, macro photography, flash photograhy, and other techniques. There was some Photoshop stuff and suff on high dynamic range, but generally the thrust of the programs was for inspiration and getting better at composition and expression.

I hope we can get a bigger group to go down in 2010. It was a good social opportunity (other than the fixation on past reproductive experiences), and the food is very good.

One of the Nikon presentors talked about something that struck a chord. Personally, I dislike spending time on a PC flubbing around with my image files in one of the software packages I don't understand how to use. I'd like to blame someone else for my feeble skills, but the truth is it's my lack of interest in becoming competent with the many and varied manipulations a person can do to an otherwise poorly executed exposure (I have LOTS of those, maybe we should have an exhibit "Bad Idea, PoorlyExecuted") is behind my dislike. The Nikon guy addressed this issue by stating he captures images in both raw and jpg format, and seldom uses the raw files. His shooting philosophy is to get the image "right" in camera so all he needs to do is either print or post the result. He did state he does crop and sharpen for prints, but little else. What a concept! Capture what you want in camera, and show everybody what you did!!

I know some of you get enjoyment out of working with software, and I encourage you to continue. For the rest of us........maybe we should go back to shooting the best shot we can do and not worry about what follows....

On to the Bangor Fair. thank you for all your help during collection, judging and hanging. We had a very good hanging crew. I guess a lot of you enjoy a good hangin' after a hard days work! We had several club members do well in the competiotion, including Alice Frati and Marty Hipsky with Best in Show awards.

I am curious, hopw many of you would like a club trip to the Philidelphia area........just an off the wall idea....

BlogDon

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

UpComing


The Bangor State Fair is coming right up. We can use some help on Wednesday July 29 to hang images. Please contact Mary or just show up at 5:30 or so.


Submittals must be ready by this Monday evening. Collection begins around 5:30.


I've included a shot from June's slide film effort. I've gotten some comments about how much time I played with this subject. What do you think?

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Transition at Hand


We are in the process of a transition. Before you get carried away, there is nothing personal going on here. All business. Mary was or chief blogger. Now she is the chief aperture of the club, the head ISO as it were. I, agreeable me, am in the process of taking on this blog stuff. Just call me BlogDon.
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