Newsletter April 2015

Editor: Bob Breach

The President’s Column

With only a few weeks left of my term as President I would like to thank all of you for your active support and encouragement during the season, and in particular the committee members who do much work behind the scenes.

Since the December Newsletter we have had some excellent meetings. In particular I thought that “An Evening with Dave Venables”, “A Passion for Pastels with Irene Froy”, and “Parry’s Pictures” were inspira-tional events. Most competitions continue to be well supported and I congratulate recent winners. Anne Sutcliffe stepped in at very short notice to judge the Creative Competition due to illness of the scheduled judge. Many members commented on Anne’s helpful reviews.

The major event of recent months was our very successful 37th Open Exhibition of

British Photography, held on the 14th March. Three independent judges considered

4,000 entries, and selected prints and digital images which were exhibited in a superb venue at Solihull School. Jim Hiscox is to be congratulated for the overall organisation of the event, ably supported by a number of members. Solihull School also felt the event was a success from their point of view, so we believe this will become a permanent arrangement.

The new venue for the monthly Technical Workshops appears to be working well and has helped to reduce our costs. Bob Breach has introduced an attendance sheet which allows him to anticipate the level of participation.

Some members volunteered to take photos at the recent Great Solihull Cake Off event. Vic Faizey has written an item in this Newsletter about his experience on that photo shoot. The next photo opportunity for Society members will be the Solihull Jazz Festival in May where I have agreed with BID that we will again be the official photographers - see later in the newsletter for more details.

In the August 2014 Newsletter I mentioned that the Society faces some challenges. Increasing costs and a desire to hold our membership fees at a reasonable level has seen a reduction in our financial reserves. Many of our members are of a certain age. Some are finding it too difficult to attend meetings and, inevitably, will cease to be members. Average attendance at meetings this year is lower than last year. Having investigated alternative venues, the WI Hall offers the best available facilities near the town centre, but the Hall is likely to increase its charges again this summer.

We should see these challenges as an opportunity to refine our activities and recruit more members. Our website and social media activities (Facebook and Twitter) are attracting visitors and potential new members. This Newsletter contains an article by James Glenn which outlines how members can help to raise our profile on the inter-net with very little effort.

We will be able to discuss these matters further at the AGM and I would ask all members to think about ways to strengthen our society in order to safeguard its future.

Rhys Jones – President

Inside this issue:

Solihull Open Exhibi-tion of Photography by Jim Hiscox

2

Fair Trade Cake-off by Vic Faizey

3

A Social Revolution by James Glenn

4

Solihull Jazz Festival by Bob Breach

5

Planning Next Year’s Programme by Hugh Tottle

6

Technical Workshops by Bob breach

6

Editor - Bob Breach

breaches@btinternet.com

Your Society needs your support

As set out by Rhys we

can all help to recruit new members, thus

improving the health of the Society. For example we have a new publicity poster that can be down-

loaded from the member’s area of the website for display in local venues. If you

know of a suitable location, please print and

put one up. Also take every oppor-

tunity to encourage potential new members

to come along and try us out for an evening.

Page 2

After a huge effort by the whole team, the Solihull 37th

Exhibition of British photography 2015 finally took place at

Solihull School on 14th March. This was the first time it had

been held at the school and we are enormously grateful to

them for the excellent support and facilities that were provid-

ed to us. Both the Society and the School believe that this

should be a long term and growing relationship and we look

forward to another even more successful Exhibition next year

around the same time.

Our judges were Malcolm Ranieri, Barbie Lindsay and Russell

Lindsay who had a difficult task choosing the selected images

from the 4000 that were entered. Some of their comments

about the Exhibition:

“I was impressed by the overall standard of prints

which will be a joy to see when hung” Barbie Lindsay.

“We were made very welcome by the Solihull organis-

ing team whose experience helped to make a smooth

job of the selection process” Russell Lindsay.

“It was encouraging to see that prints are continuing

at the Exhibition. Both colour and mono prints were

of a high standard. The projected images were also of

a good standard.” Malcolm Ranieri.

I believe the Exhibition generally went very well and

the idea of displaying all the DPI images on a very large screen monitor rather than using a projector

worked well. However the change of venue did raise a number of issues and I have already produced a heav-ily revised plan for next year but if anyone has useful

ideas/comments I would like to hear them.

We can always use extra help too so if you

would like to be involved next time please let me know otherwise I will have to resort

to pressgang techniques!

Solihull Open Exhibition of Photography by Jim Hiscox

Newsletter - April 2015

Fair Trade Cake-off by Vic Faizey

Page 3

Through the Society’s links with various local organisations we

often get asked to help out as official event photographers.

Vic Faizey reports on his first photographic outing for the Society

at the Fair Trade Cake-off.

I offered my services on behalf of Solihull Photographic Society to shoot for Solihull Fair Trade Cake Off, based on the popular TV programme. As I have never done anything like this and my photography level is towards bottom end of novice I asked if it would be

possible to have a more experienced photographer mentor me, which Rhys Jones kindly

offered to do.

When I got to the location on the day I met up with Rhys

and James Glenn to discuss how we would proceed. When it came to actually taking the shots I was so nervous my first twenty shots were useless as I was

shaking so much. I finally managed to calm myself down and with the help of Rhys, I went back and started

to re-take shots and felt much more relaxed and started to enjoy it. Some of my shots of the day are shown

here.

Rhys did an excellent job in organising people and getting the best out of the day. I hope we did the event

justice and we can support it again next year. I also

hope it has heightened the awareness of our Society.

Newsletter - April 2015

The Mayor

Rhys organising the photoshoot

Page 4

This being my first newsletter article I’m not entirely sure where to start. So, let’s start

with an idea, image sharing. Not a drastically new idea I know, but an area where I believe we can do so much more as a club. When do we currently share photo ideas and

concepts between club members? Competition evenings? Maybe at a technical workshop or Bob Bracher’s competition group? We can definitely increase this.

I love seeing everyone’s images and all the different ideas you have. This isn’t limited to competition photography. There were some great Venice images in Dave Venable’s talk.

This is why I enjoy Instagram (I’m only lightly addicted, honest). It’s a mobile feed of wonderful photos and ideas from people I’ve chosen to follow; friends or strangers. There are many other image sharing platforms available and we don’t have to all use the

same one, each to their own. Wouldn’t it be great though if we could all see each others photos, comment, draw inspiration, learn.

If you cast your mind back to a few weeks ago, I debuted our new club hashtag #solihullphotosoc - some of you have started to use this in your posts already which is great. Please, if you haven’t already, start using it with your posts. A hashtag is a way of

grouping individual’s posts together for collective viewing. Now this can be done cross platform as well. Currently I’m using Tagboard to view our posts, which collates from

Twitter, Facebook (not perfectly), Instagram, Google+, Vine, and Flickr. Take a look at our Tagboard here. (control/click to open)

If you don’t already share your images online, or would like to know what all the hype is

about, let me briefly explain Instagram (if you want some more info or help with the app let me know). Instagram is a highly social, image sharing network. It works in a very

similar manner to Twitter, except you only post images. Once you have created an account, you can follow anyone you like.

A Social Revolution by James Glenn

Newsletter - April 2015

Page 5

Their photos will then appear in your feed. If you don’t want your photos publicly

viewable you can make your account private and only post to your followers. Photos can be captioned and tagged (geo and hash) so others can find them. Instagram is only

available on mobile platforms through the respective app stores (iOS, Android, Windows Phone). There is a web viewer, but you can’t post from it. This might be a downside for some, but it’s easy to transfer your edited photos to your phone to post. Instagram

rose to fame due to its quick and easy photo filters, however, it is much more than that. The app has basic image editing functionality embedded (crop, brightness, saturation,

contrast, highlights, shadows etc.) which can be used on your photo, or you can post straight out of camera. The choice is yours. There are now 300 million active users on Instagram from all walks of life. If you want to follow professional photographers, celeb-

rities, fitness instructors, family, friends, the options are all there. Follow me if you wish @jiiimiii

Re-emphasising the social aspects, Instagram users around the world regularly meet up for so-called “Instawalks” and post these photos for all to see. This would be a great

way to engage with the local area as a club, in fact Visit Birmingham recently organised an Instawalk. Let me know if you are interested in attending an Instawalk (you don’t

even have to be on Instagram to attend!) and I’ll organise one soon.

So I’ll end on a call to action - post your next photo to an image sharing platform of your choice and tag

#solihullphotosoc

Thanks for reading. James.

Okay I might be slightly addicted.

Newsletter - April 2015

Solihull Jazz Festival 2015 by Bob Breach

In recent years the Society has

been official photographers for

the Solihull Jazz Festival which

this year is on the 23-24 May.

As mentioned by Rhys he has

confirmed with BID that this

privilege will be renewed again

this year, thus providing en-

hanced event access and lots of

photo opportunities. Keep the

weekend free in your diaries.

solihullbid.co.uk/events/solihull-jazz-festival-2015-1

A social revolution (continued)

Page 6

I have been working on the programme for next season 2015/16. Although there is still much to do before this is complete, we discussed some aspects of it at a recent Commit-

tee meeting. These included:

Feedback from the President’s Evening last December (see previous Newsletter) in particular the desire for more detailed explanations of photographic techniques and

processing.

The fact that there are significantly fewer entries for the AV Competition and the

President’s Themed competition. Neither competition requires a full evening nor do

they justify the expense of an external judge.

The fact that we cannot hold the Member’s exhibition at the library due to changes

taking place in the display area.

The consequence is that the AV and Presidents Themed Competition will now be held on the same evening, with no external judge. Starting in the following year it is also planned

to have the Easter Week Tuesday evening off and, as noted above, there will be no Mem-bers Exhibition evening. This has released a couple of full Tuesday evening slots which

will be designated 'Technical evenings' and be devoted to photographic techniques. These evenings will be complemented by the Monday technical workshops which will continue

but in a more informal practical format.

In terms of speakers for next season we have now booked

Gianpiero Ferrari who unfortunately couldn't make it this year but will do his talk on

Western Australia, always superb photography.

David Boag who is entertaining and informative is presenting on 'The life of a Wildlife

Photographer' naturalfocus.co.uk/

Gary Groucutt will be presenting 'Visualisation' www.garygroucutt.com/

Members will know that we have now moved the monthly technical workshops from the WI

hall to a new venue at the Solihull Methodist Church Hall next to Solihull Station. The workshops start at 8.00pm prompt and finish at 10.00pm. There is plenty of parking and

for those that live outside of Solihull you could even consider using the local train. The

content of each are flexible but dates and topics so far planned for next year are:

27 April - Rhys Jones on “HDR (High Dynamic Range) - Why and How? “

22 June - James Glenn on “ My approach to editing with Lightroom”

27 July - Topic to be confirmed

24 August - Topic to be confirmed

28 September - Topic to be confirmed

If you want to lead a workshop evening or have an idea for a topic you would like covered please let me know. The sessions are very informal and people that attend find

them helpful.

Planning next year’s programme by Hugh Tottle

Technical workshops by Bob Breach

Newsletter - April 2015