Bracknell Camera Club Chairman’s Blog

Thanks to Bruce and Graham for their excellent handling of the Bring and Buy Sale. Must be down to their superior auctioneering that I now own a film camera with only slightly less controls than a pin hole camera made from an old bean tin.

Congratulations to Anne Eckersley for her award of a BPE 2*.

Bruce reminded us that he would like the trophies from last year’s exhibition returned as soon as possible, CLEANED!

There were a a number of notices for upcoming events that I will cover here as well:

• This coming Thursday sees the final date for entries to the annual Portfolio competition. A fun event if you have not done it before. Entries by email to Chris Braddley, chrisandeb@tesco.net. Standard PDI rules apply for submissions.
• It is not too late to get an entry in for the photobook part of the member’s evening on the 19th April. Submissions to Brian Steptoe if you are interested.
• We would like to collect some more prints for the Bracknell Mayor’s civic reception to be held on 28th April. Bring them in any Thursday and hand them to me or Jeff Lawrence.
• Bruce Collins can attest to the excellence of Chloe Hall’s abilities as a tutor and she is running street photography workshops around Camden market on 12th and 27th May. You can contact Chloe directly on   chloe@chloehall.co.uk

That’s all folks.

Thanks to Paul Foley for an evening of extremely impressive landscape images. And all shot on slides as well . . .

Our members have been active in external competitions:

Danish International: Peter Ellis (1 acceptance); Diana Keane (2); Steve Reynolds (2)

4th Luxembourg Int: Diana Keane (1)

5th Exhibition Bor-Serbia: Diana Keane (1)

Greater Lynn, USA: Diana Keane (1)

Southampton International: Bruce Collins (1); Diana Keane (1); Ron Gafney (2 incl 1 certificate); Peter Ellis (3); Steve Reynolds (4)

GB Small Print Circuit: Peter Ellis (7)

Well done to all!

Also note we are just 3 weeks away from the final date for Exhibition entries and 4 weeks away from the final date for the submission of entries to our Portfolio competition.

Time to catch up on a few things.

Exhibition activity for our members:

Bebington Salon – Bruce Collins (3 acceptances)

Federacion Argentina de Fotografia – Diana Keane (1)

Port Talbot International Salon – Alistair Balharrie (2); Ron Gafney (2); Peter Ellis (2); Bruce Collins (3)

8th Holland International – Steve Reynolds (8); Peter Ellis (9); Diana Keane (17)

Congratulations to the above!

If you would like to have a go at an external exhibition then we have a couple of them coming up that are good places to start. Basingstoke can be found at Basingstoke Camera Club. The second to look out for is Winchester. Both exhibitions close by the end of this month.

While on the subject of exhibitions, worth mentioning that Gemma Cumming has an exhibition opening tonight at South Hill Park. 7pm is the time and you might catch a glimpse of the proud father.

Speaking of the proud father, we host Ruari next week at the club with his talk “Hebridean Hopscotch”, and I am reliably informed that it is “the last lecture in Ruari’s highly acclaimed trilogy of presentations on the Hebrides. If the quality and content of the previous shows are anything to go by, it should be a most enjoyable evening“. I can hardly wait and I hope you can all make it!

Tomorrow sees the opening of the latest from The Photographic Angle in Bracknell at 1 Thames Valley, Wokingham Road, RG42 1PP. The images exhibited are those taken by students of the Ikamva Youth project in South Africa; a fresh take on life in the townships. Free entry and runs until 15th Feb.

Finally, Bruce Collins spotted the following link that provides guidance to security staff on handling members of the public taking photographs, as provided by the BSIA. To quote Bruce: “It is short and to the point and is nicely on the side of the photographer.”

We have received an update, as follows:

Dear Fellow Photographers,

Thanks go to John Buttress FRPS for showing us his coastal landscapes. It was his eye for a fine composition that impressed me the most. That and the fact he kept getting up early . . .

Jeff Lawrence brought us up to date with the results from the SPF Exhibition, where Bracknell came second in the PDI competition, behind Havant and ahead of Southampton. Steve Reynolds received a highly commended for his ‘Dance of Life’. The preview evening for the exhibition is to be Friday 6th January, from 7pm in Salisbury library.

The first round of the SPF print league has also taken place, where Bracknell came first! Two maximums were scored by Peter Ellis (for ‘End of an Era’) and Steve Buesden (for ‘Boscombe Pier’). Second round to be at Bracknell next week, so come and be amazed!

Our members have also been active in external competitions, as follows:

• Budapest International; Steve Reynolds (1 acceptance), Peter Ellis (5 acceptances)
• Wrekin Salon; Steve Reynolds (1 acceptance)
• RPS TV DIG Print Competition; Diana Keane (Commended), Jan Walters (Commended) and Peter Handford (Highly Commended)

And also from last week Anne Eckersley romped home a winner in the Bracknell annual photo competition on the theme of Routes and Trees.

Well done to all.

Future events:

• On Saturday we have the opening of our ‘Transformation’ exhibition at South Hill Park. Reception from 4pm. A lot of hard work from all concerned but particularly Janice Bradley and Brian Steptoe. The final selection looks great.
• On Tuesday Brian is hosting the second workshop on producing a photobook
• Next Thursday we have the second round of the SPF Print League as noted above
• Finally Joe Cornish is speaking at Amersham PS on Monday 30^th January 2012, at 8pm. That is in the Drake Hall in Amersham at the cost of £10.

Have a good week.

An excellent talk from from Ian Bateman on his AV sequences, with very good tips and techniques interspersed between first class examples of his work.

Congratulations go to Barry Callan (1) and Anne Eckersley (2) for their acceptances in the Guernsey Salon.

Charles Elsden notified us of the next AV SIG meeting to be held on Monday at Coopers Hill. Drop Charles an email if you are interested in developing your AV skills further, and Ruari reminded us that there is an AV for beginners workshop due to run on 20th December (spaces available!)

Jeff Lawrence took the chance to note that the start of the club’s external competition season is nearly upon us. In addition to selecting images from the club’s internal competitions there is also the opportunity for members to submit images directly to Jeff for consideration by the selection committee.

Next Tuesday sees the ‘Introduction to Lightroom 3.0′ workshop at Coopers Hill, room 5, 8pm.

Next Thursday we have the 3rd round of the internal PDI league. Get your images in early!

Have a good week.

Many thanks go to Rosemary Wilman for guiding us through the 2nd round of the print league. Good insightful comments were the order of the day.

Catching up on external acceptances we have:

Limours Salon Mondial – Alistair Balharrie (2), Peter Ellis (3), Ron Gafney (1)

Havant – Alistair Balharrie (1), Anne Eckersley (1)

Air Britain 2010 – Ron Gafney (2nd Place and 5 Highly Commended)

Swansea International – Alistair Balharrie (1), Ron Gafney (1), Peter Ellis (3)

RPS TV DIG PI Competition – Ron Gafney (2)

Well done folks, some good results there.

Upcoming events:

The World Press Photo 2011 Exhibition comes to the Royal Festival Hall from 11 Nov to 29 Nov.

The Photographic Angle are showing their ‘Through My Eyes’ exhibition at 1 Thames Valley, Wokingham Road from 12th – 16th Nov (10:00 – 15:00). The images come from a South African youth project.

On Tuesday Brian Steptoe is running his ‘Creating a Photobook’ workshop.

Next Thursday we have ‘An Evening of AV Entertainment’ with Ian Bateman LLB FRPS MPAGB

On Saturday 19th Nov Terry O’Neill will be making a personal appearance at Gallery Rouge in St. Albans to open his exhibition there.

The club website has a lot of useful features that will enable you to keep up to date with latest news about the club. You can:

Sign-up for web site updates, this is an opt-in mailing list which you can opt out of as well.
We now have a Facebook page please go and “Like” us If you are worried about personal information on Facebook – Don’t put any on it!
We also have a Twitter feed

All these features are directly accessible from buttons on the club’s website homepage.

We also have a forum which has seen little action lately please sign up and lets see if we can get it a bit more active.

Workshops: If you sign up for a workshop please do attend, if you do not turn up then 1. You are depriving someone else from attending. 2. The workshops are set to break even so non-attendance means we will run at a loss. 3. The presenters put a lot of their own time and effort into putting on the workshops and its just plain rude not to ignore the e-mail reminders and then just not turn up.
This year we are also inviting workshop attendees to provide feedback via a short anonymous on-line form. Please take 2 minutes to complete it is the only way we can ensure the improvement of future workshops. The number of people providing feedback to date is very poor.

A full list of forthcoming workshops is on the website and the sign-up sheets are available on every club night. Please support these.

Thanks go to Mike Dales ARPS for a very entertaining evening full of great images and a wide range of styles. You may remember that he mentioned his web site for his L and A panels and some more experimental work. His web site can be viewed here.

A reminder that the club has its own Facebook page here. It is always nice to tell someone you ‘Like’ them so go there and click that button.

Next Tuesday is the Informal Photo Critique workshop.

Next Thursday is the first round of our print league. As Richard Reynolds mentioned he will have print labels available at the club next week, but if you don’t want to leave it to the last minute then you can download them from the web site, under the section devoted to competition rules. Print labels need to be attached to the back of your submission for those new to print competitions.

Tuesday, 18th October is the date for the Introduction to Photoshop workshop. Spaces are still available and you can sign up next week.

Our thanks go to Kevin Day, our judge for the first round of the PDI league, and the first user of our new scoring system. I thought his comments and feedback were right on the money and he created a friendly atmosphere. Congratulations to our new batch of gold medal winners.

The workshop for this coming Tuesday has been cancelled. All that needed to be done for ‘Preparing for the SHP Exhibition’ has been done it seems.

Next Thursday sees us hosting ‘An evening with Mike Dales’.

Finally, for those on Flickr, I spotted a selection of images from the National Media Museum in Bradford,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmediamuseum/

Have a good week!