And Carol perilously close to the edge!

Karyn Packing Natex packages

Our Natex project is almost all over, although there’s a lot of tidying up of finances and reporting now.

Support from many KCPS members for Natex through its many phases has been fantastic. We had another long day yesterday at the Te Horo Hall to repack all the prints into 109 boxes and packages, for dispatch back to the entrants. Thanks to Hugh, Karyn, Jo, Gary, Alan, Peter Ellis, and Jenny for helping out on this phase, as well as all those who helped mount the exhibition last Wednesday and then dismount it on Sunday.

Monday Meeting

Ou regular meeting at 7:30 pm at OBC next Monday 13 May will cover what happened at the PSNZ Convention last week. For a bit of a preview, you can see my seven “running commentary” blog entries at blog.photography.org.nz. Don’t forget that entries for the Autumn Salon are also due – go to this link on our website. The judge for this Salon is Bruce Girdwood.

The 19 images which were rated Highly Commended or Honours by Tony Whincup when he judged our Summer Salon on 25 March are now available. I’m sorry it’s taken so long – things have been rather busy with Natex.

Either go to the GALLERIES menu on our home page where from a drop-down you can access all galleries, or you can get to them directly here.  Enjoy.

Natex

Deciding on Natex Prints Layout

Thanks once again to all those who have been helping with various tasks for Natex.  One of the recent jobs was to look at all the accepted prints in the Te Horo Hall, and decide on the exhibition layout.

The Exhibition will be mounted in the West Gallery of the Wellington Town Hall next Wednesday.

If you weren’t able to register for the PSNZ convention, you can still see the Exhibition.  Best times for public viewing are on Friday and Saturday 3 and 4 May, from 9 am to 5 pm.  Do check it out if you can.

News from the Darkroom

The Monochrome Film Users Group

This group caters for those interested in capturing images on black and white film of different formats and darkroom techniques for processing and printing.

Meetings are normally held on the third Thursday of the month.

The next meeting is on Thursday 18^th April at the home of Bill Harris, at 12 Kohekohe Road, Waikanae at 1930.

 Meeting Reviews

This is the first newsletter for 2013 and we have had two meetings covering a variety of topics which included:- keeping FB prints flat; pre-exposure; different prints from the same negative; using hypo clearing agent; comparison of different printing method; Rodinal Special developer examples; print and negative critiquing and discussion of our own and other exhibitions.

Exhibition

And mentioning exhibitions I think our group should be rightfully proud of our “Monochrome X 10” exhibition held at the Odlins Gallery from 16^th to 27^th of January. It was Odlins gallery most successful exhibition to date and we have been welcomed back to hold another one which we have agreed should be in approximately two years.

Many thanks to Iris and the Odlins Gallery supporters and all who helped, including ourselves, who made it work.

A lot of work but all agreed a worthwhile and rewarding result.

We now need to get into the darkroom and start on a fresh portfolio for the next exhibition.

Group Outing

Four of our group, Arthur, Brian, Fred, myself plus Tanya my daughter, met on the Wellington waterfront early Saturday morning March 16^th for a photo shoot. An enjoyable couple of hours spent photographing the waterfront with just the right amount of cloud cover to make it interesting. I tested out my recently acquired 6×12 medium format back for my 4×5 Linhof, a format which I like and will spend more time pursuing. Our shoot was concluded with a cuppa and chat in a local cafe and then off home to develop the mornings results one of which is shown in this month’s images.

New Products

Fred brought to our attention a recently developed film developer called Spursinn HCD by SPUR from Germany. This can be used as a single or two bath developer and suitable for a wide range of films allowing push / pull development with a full range of tones and fine grain. There is an interesting Internet article about it on: – www.theonlinedarkroom.com/2013/03/the-lowdown-on-spursinn-hcd.html

This Month’s Images

This month’s first image was captured with a Nikon 35Ti on 35mm Kodak 400 TX film developed in Agfa Rodinal Special.

Peter Bush Opening the Monochrome X10 Exhibition – by Michael Martin.

The second image was captured on 120 medium format Kodak TMY 400 T-Max with a 6x12cm back, attached to a 4x5inch Linhof camera and also developed in Agfa Rodinal Special.

Port Nicholson Marina – by Michael Martin.

Food for Thought

“I do not object to retouching, dodging, or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique.” – Alfred Stieglitz, 1864 – 1946, American photographer.

Look, See, Compose, Capture and most of all Enjoy.

Michael Martin.

“Eye Spy” – An Image that Perhaps Covers Eye and Feathered! – ©Carol Molineux

At our KCPS meeting next Monday we will have a critique of your submitted images on the first five subjects from the Wellington interclub print battle that we will be hosting in August:

• Beams
• Contained
• Eggs
• Eye
• Feathered

This is a great opportunity for those members who have not submitted any images for judging in our Salons, but would welcome feedback on their work by their peers in a non threatening environment.

Also for members who are regular contributors to our Salons it’s the opportunity to stretch your imagination, within the bounds of the Topic.

If you are going to bring along prints they don’t need to be matted, but need to be large enough to be seen by the audience, so a minimum of 20cm x 15cm.

If you are going to bring along digital images, it would be helpful if you could email them  to Ian by Sunday night (i.linning@xtra.co.nz) and bring along your USB drive on the night.

Come along and enjoy an entertaining and educational evening on Monday at 7:30 pm.

Reblogged from Photographic Society of NZ:

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Full details of the Natex Awards are now available on the PSNZ National Exhibition web page, which also has a link to the Awarded images as a Flickr set.  Congratulations to all the Award winners. Below is a selection of just four of the gold medal winners - one from each section.

All of the images will be seen at their best in the National Exhibition, on during the…

Read more… 104 more words

Reblogged from Photographic Society of NZ:

Selection of images for the PSNZ National Exhibition of Photography took place last weekend at Whitireia Polytechnic in Paraparaumu. I would like to acknowledge the hard work done by all the nine selectors, as well as the magnificent effort by more than twenty volunteers from the Kapiti Coast Photographic Society for what is a very large and complex logistical exercise. The selection process took until noon Sunday.

Read more… 225 more words

These are due by Monday 11 March. Enter online via http://kcps.org.nz/salon-entry-form/ and bring along any prints plus a printout of the entry form to the meeting on Monday night when Julian Ward is speaking.

Competition rules can be downloaded from here.

Judging of the salon will be by Tony Whincup at the following meeting on Monday 25 March.

Photo (c) Julian Ward

Julian Ward will speak to us next Monday at 7:30 pm on Street Photography. This should be an excellent presentation, especially for those interested in street and monochrome work.

Here is Julian’s own introduction to his talk:

“I live in the centre of Wellington and tramp its streets relentlessly. As I get older I hunt less and pictures come to me like little gifts. This has been my habit for over 40 years. I particularly enjoy the balance of human form and decisive moments.

Photographers have always recorded street life but in recent years it has become more difficult because of public/state paranoia. Even the police question photographer’s freedoms.

I would like to discuss these changing times, show my work and talk about technique.

See my website: www.julianward.co.nz“

The topic is Low Light Photography, and it will be led by Ian Linning.

This will be a practical session – so bring your camera, etc. The idea will be be to match up newer members with more experienced ones so they can work together and try various techniques for dealing with low light.

Don’t stay in the dark about this topic – come along and learn and have fun!

Nick Ward Report

Some 40 KCPS members were spellbound last week for the talk by Nick Ward.

He showed a couple of opening sequences from movies such as Hitchock’s “Rear Window” to illustrate how much could be conveyed about the characters and the story simply from imagery, without dialogue.  The lessons for our own photography were obvious, and his presentation was well received.