Tuesday 21st January – Wonderful Macro by Dr john BrackenburyOn Tuesday we were treated to a fascinating and highly entertaining talk by Dr John Brackenbury where he illustrated his, sometimes unique, approach to photography.
A retired university lecturer, John began photographing objects to illustrate his work and in the process discovered the joy of capturing details that are not visible to the human eye in real time.
He started the evening by showing images of objects moving in water, captured with equipment he’d designed himself including a laser trigger and a 2500volt flash! This revealed amazing effects as objects, such as lightbulbs, broke the surface of the water. This was followed by images of insects in flight captured using similar techniques (but without the flash) to show the mechanics of their flight with wings twisting and bodies carefully balanced.
Finally John showed us his current passion for Wide Angle Macro shots where, in his words, he tries to bring the insects into our world, by including the landscape in the macro image – once again through the use of a custom lens designed for the purpose. The resulting images are amazing, especially when multiple shots are combined in photoshop to show, for example a butterfly taking off from a flower.
I think everyone present was left stunned by the quality and uniqueness of the images and inspired to try something similar themselves – just remember to unplug the lightbulb before putting it in water!Some examples of John’s work can be found here

Review by Brian Sibley
Tuesday 14th January – George Dellar Cup and Presidents Challenge
This week judge Peter Going LRPS was presented with the daunting task of judging two competitions, both with over 40 images. He embraced the challenge with a friendly, witty and constructive style, handing out helpful hints and tips along the way that made the evening enjoyable.
It was a joy to see so many high quality images of the St.Ives area entered in the George Dellar Cup, reinforcing the sentiments of the recent talk by Chris Shepherd about not ignoring the local area in your photography.
After the break we moved onto the President’s Challenge competition which produced some stunning architectural images and images of architecture – a distinction Peter referred to after he revealed that his LRPS panel was all architecture images and was a favourite subject! Once again he did a great job to get through all the images with good humour, advice and with a wide range of points being awarded.
The results for the George Dellar Cup are here and selection of Images are below

Presidents Challenge results are here and a selection of images below

Review by Brian Sibley

 

Tuesday 7th January – Members 10 Minute Presentations
Tuesday saw our Members 10 Minute presentation night, and as always we were treated to a fascinating selection of images on a wide range of subjects.
Graham Shirra started the evening by showing us a selection of the images he likes to take, followed by an insight into Colin Chesterton’s photography inspiration. Next up was Paul Dobson who gave us all a little background into how long he’s been a photographer before showing us his passion for scuba diving, finally Vaughan Clark showed us some amazing images captured through his telescopes.
The second half of the evening was given over to Mark Hudson who showed us a collection of his film photography prints taken mostly within a couple of miles of his house in Needingworth or at Brancaster Staithe in Norfolk.
All the members who presented showed great enthusiasm and passion for their chosen subjects and this was well illustrated by their images. Thank you to you all for presenting!
A selection of the 10 Minute images are shown below

Review by Brian Sibley

 

Tuesday 17th December – Christmas Social

An entertaining evening with food, drinks quizzes, raffle prizes and good company. Thank you to everyone who helped and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Some photos of the evening snapped by Hayley on her mobile:

Review by Stephen Laws

Tuesday 10th December – 4 Way Battle with Judge Robert Good

A close battle with 8 DPI and 8 Prints from St Ives, St Neots, March and Ely Clubs. This year March Club triumphed with a total score of 291 points.

Artsfest was well atttended and the public vote for best images went to:
1st Place – Steve Laws, Godmanchester Snow
2nd Place – Mark Hudson, Plane Tree Leaf
3rd Place – Hayley Howett, River Terrace Café Sunset

Tuesday 3rd December – Looking Local, Chris Shepherd

On Tuesday evening we enjoyed a talk by Chris Shepherd where he encouraged us to “Look Local”. In this talk Chris highlighted that as photographers we often suffer from what he loves to call “Locational Myopia” – constantly wishing we were in some exotic location with the best possible equipment!

Chris discussed how his personal journey to become a landscape photographer had started with a 1 Megapixel “Point and Shoot” camera taking pictures in the area around his house, to now where his images of Essex and Suffolk are being featured in many well known publications and web sites.

The talk was made all the more entertaining with Chris’ amusing tales behind the high quality images he displayed, with just enough technical information to satisfy the more curious in the audience.

As one of his images was titled – “Inspiration Found”!

For more of Chris’ work see his website here

Review by Brian Sibley

26th November – Monthly Competition
A strong entry of over 90 images over the evening gave Judge Naomi Saul a tough job, but she still managed to give useful critique on all the images presented and used a reasonable range of scores through the night.
The DPI’s were of a high standard and Naomi held back 13 images for the final top scores before awarding 20 points to Malcolm, Tony, Alice and Gary, resulting with Malcolm and Alice tied for first place.
In the Print category we had an increased number of entries this month, with 20 points being awarded to Tim and Gary, but this didn’t stop Karen topping the scores with two 19’s!
November Monthly DPI Results Here
A selection of images are

November Monthly Print Results Here
A selection of images are

Review by Brian Sibley

19th November – The Shuttleworth Collection by Dave Stewart LBPAA
A passionate portrayal of the aviation history that is the Shuttleworth Collection. From Bleriot to the iconic Spitfire Dave’s images told a fascinating story. He marvelled at the bravery of the pilots that developed and flew these early planes, showing images of canvas and wood held together with string and glue that launched aircraft manufacturers such as Sopwith, with the Pup and the Camel, Hawker, we saw the Cygnet, and many more. Anecdotes, observations and an extensive knowledge of the aircraft at the Shuttleworth Collection together with the biography of Richard Shuttleworth (1909 – 1940) made this lecture particularly poignant.
To see more of Dave’s images check out his gallery of airshow images here.
Review by Karen Laws

Internal Competitions
Traditionally our competitions open 3 weeks before and close 1 week before the competition. However, there is no rule as to when a competition can open so the committee have decided that all competitions will now open at the start of the season which will allow members on holiday to upload their photos to the Photo Entry system at any time and avoid Alice having to hold onto entries and submit at the correct time.
All competitions are now open.

12th November 2019 – Vantastic – A Hebridean Tour by Gary Dean LRPS, CPAGB, BEP2*

Well what a treat, our own Gary Dean giving a fantastic, Vantastic talk on Tuesday evening. Stunning scenery, fabulous flora and fauna, a real passion for the place and a pinch of wry wit delighted all who attended.

We travelled through the islands of the Hebrides with Gary giving geographical, cultural and historical facts as he showed us the wonders these islands have to share. Together with photographic commentary and personal reasons for taking the shots. Just added a new destination to my bucket list.

Review by Karen Laws

8th and 9th November 2019 – Annual Exhibition

Lights, prints action 10 am Friday morning the doors are open and the public started to view the images on display. This calm opening was the result of the hard hard work of the volunteers on Thursday evening. Putting up lights, collecting and erecting exhibition boards, setting up computers and TV’s for the DPI presentation and mounting the images on the boards took a band of club members around three hours to achieve. The result was appreciated by everyone who walked through our doors.

Saturday, better weather and the weekend market meant that footfall was larger than expected and our lovely meet and greeters were kept busy. Comments form the public contained the words ‘superb’ ‘wow!’ ‘great images’ ‘amazing’. Club members supporting the exhibition commented on the range of images as did many members of the general public. 5pm doors closed. Exhibition dismantled and room back to normal in 40 minutes. Special mention to the board delivery team who still had to return boards to storage before going home.

The statistics 240 images from 33 club members. Over 400 visitors and some 1200 individual votes counted. What a fantastic weekend!

Review by Karen Laws.

Full results are available here.

Here are the top five winning images:

A huge thank you to everyone that helped, supported, exhibited and visited our exhibition.

5th November – Swavesey 2-Way Battle

A good friendly competition last night between Swavesey Camera Club and St Ives with 12 Prints and 12 DPIs from each club all by different authors.The competition was judged by Jonathan Vaines from Cambridge Camera Club who gave some great feedback on the images presented as well as some good advice. Last year we tied after the DPI round but Swavesey had the better prints beating St Ives by 3 points. Coincidentally this year we again tied after the DPI round but St Ives had the better prints making a win for St Ives this year by 16 points.

	Swavesey Score	St Ives Score
DPI	200	200
Prints	181	197
TOTAL	381	397

Here are some of the images which scored a maximum of 20 points.

Full Results are available here.

29th October – Monthly DPI Competition with Judge Jim Hartje

Congratulations to Stephen Hardy, Bryan Basketter and Tony Barraclough as joint winners of this months DPI competition. Well done to Tony Barraclough for his image “Happiness” and to Malcolmn Clements for his image “Norwegian Dawn” which both scored a maximum of 20 points.

Full Results of the October Monthly DPI Competition are available here.
Cumulative Results for the Monthly DPI competitions so far are available here.

29th October – Monthly Print Competition with Judge Jim Hartje

Congratulations to Ivan Barrett and Gary Dean as joint winners of this months print competition. Well done to Ivan Barrett for his image “Vestrahorn. Iceland” and to Gary Dean for his image “Wild Ibarian Fratillaries, Spain” which both scored a maximum of 20 points.

Full Results of the October Monthly Print Competition are available here.
Cumulative Results for the Monthly Print competitions so far are available here.

22nd October – Creative Techniques presentation by Ann Miles

Ann a seasoned lecturer, long standing camera club member and creative photographer presented us with a unique insight into the world of creative photography. She began in the mid 19th century with the birth of photography and the startling revelation that even early models were airbrushed, actually paint brushed. For the beginners in the group Ann presented a well illustrated collection of images using in-camera techniques including setting shutter speed, F stops (aperture) and moving the camera for deliberate blur. After our tea break she moved into the highly technical world of post image processing using various software packages. Something for everyone and a real sense of what can be achieved both in camera and from post processing. I’m sure members will be trying out some of these ideas for future club competition entries.

See this Website for more excellent example of Ann’s work.

A few people asked if it was possible to still get copies of the free Nik Collection Software which includes the Silver Efex Pro and other tools to simplify photo editing. You can either buy the latest version from DXO for £125 (although there are normally special offers) or download the old free version from this link.

15th October – Michaelmas Fair

No meeting this week due to the Michaelmas Fair in St Ives. A few members took the opportunity to visit the fair and try some night photography and slow shutter affects with the fairground lights.

8th October – Beginners guide to cameras and taking pictures by Alice Kendrick

Alice gave an informative talk on the basic camera settings to help members understand the impact of aperture, ISO and speed on depth of field and exposure and why we should take more control of our camera. Alice illustrated this through some of her own excellent photographs and then talked about how to take better pictures using some of the basic composiition rules. A very useful talk for new members as well as a good refresher for our regular members.

8th October – British Photographic Exhibions (BPE) by Gary Dean

Gary talked about his journey to achieve a BPE2 award by getting his images accepted into BPE exhibitions. He explained that there is usually one or more BPE exhibitions each month and you can enter your selection of images to be judged for acceptance into the exhibition. Images are judged by three people each scoring an image 1 to 5 with no feedback. If an image scores 12 or more then it is accepted into the exhibtion. If you get 25 images accepted then you are awarded a BPE1. Gary showed us examples of his excellent nature and sports photography that has been accepted into the exhibitions and what he has planned this year. We also had a look at some of the other accepted image including some fabulous scapes and lot of very interesting creative photographs.
If anyone wants to find out more take a look at the BPE Website.

1st October – Shooting People a guided hands on experience led by Jonathan Sayer

A huge thank you to Jonathan who put a lot of thought and effort into this informative, fun evening. A guided display of ‘people’ images from formal to informal, staged and more candid shots set up the evening. Jonathan described his career and how he captured moments at weddings, balls, graduations and more.
He then introduced us to the models for the evening a very glamorous small female named Barbie wearing an elegant ball gown. She was accompanied by her two, rather under-dressed companions action man and action man. What a great way of putting people at ease.
During the evening Jonathan and other club members were on hand with advice, which I know many new members found invaluable.

Review by Karen Laws

24th September – Monthly DPI Competition with Judge Ben Pike

Congratulations to Alice Kendrick for winning this competition with images: “Female Large Copper, Lycaena dispar” and “Nettle Weevil, Phyllobius pomaceus” which both scored 19. Well done to Malcolm Clements for his image “Grey Heron at Dawn” and to Steve Laws for his image “Iceland Lights” which both scored a maximum of 20 points.

Full Results of the September Monthly DPI Competition are available here.

24th September – Monthly Print Competition with Judge Ben Pike

Congratulations to Ivan Barrett for winning this competition with images: “Bad Hair Day Selfie” and “Dodge” which scored 20 and 19. Well done to Steve Laws for his image “Munich Staircase” which also scored a maximum of 20 points.

Full Results of the September Monthly Print Competition are available here.

17th September Costa Rica presented by Club Member Vaughan Clark

What a delight, Vaughan’s presentation was colourful and informative with a dash of humour and technical detail. Vaughan eloquently described his journey around Costa Rica sharing the quirkiness of polar bear statues and the ever present dangers of yellow Eyelash Vipers and American crocodiles. Vaughan talked with passion about the flora and fauna of the region including images of birds, insects, arachnids, reptiles and mammals. Closing aptly with a stunning sunset.




Review by Karen Laws

10th September Picture the Past – Talk by Hannah Vandridge from the Norris Museum

In the first half of our evening meeting this week, we were treated to an excellent talk by Hannah from the Norris Museum who told us about some of the history of St Ives. Her talk was aptly illustrated with a wide selection of photographs spanning the last 150 years or so. Some of these had been taken by the museum’s founder, Herbert Norris and enabled us to make interesting comparisons with St Ives as we know it today. Others were more recent and we finished with an image taken by our very own George Dellar on the eve of the millennium. There were some fascinating facts in Hannah’s talk and she also included an interactive element to her talk with a series of mystery objects which she handed round making it all the more engaging.
Review by Alice Kendrick

10th September Social Media – Brian Sibley

The second half of the evening saw our Vice President, Brian, explaining our various social media channels, how they work and what we use them for. It made everything very clear and will hopefully encourage more of our members to interact with them.
Social Media Links: Facebook Members Group, Face Book Club Page, Instagram Club Page and Twitter Club Page.

3rd September Aspects of Iceland – Talk by Barrie and Liz Hatten

We are never disappointed by this duo’s presentations. This time we were delighted by images from across the island and across the seasons. Iceland a land of fire and ice provided the back drop for Barrie and Liz’s stunning images of the flora, fauna and magnificent landscapes.

Travelling through the seasons and around the coastline and into the interior tonight provided inspiration for photographers as Barrie explained how some images had come about because of poor weather conditions and how to make the most of the setting. Liz’s enthusiasm and knowledge of Iceland engaged all.
I suspect some members of the club may well be considering a trip to Iceland in the future.
Review by Karen Laws