Summer Salon Judging Monday 26 March

17 Saturday Mar 2012

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This should be an excellent session.  With our new online salon entry form and enthusiastic new members, we had a bumper crop of entries.

Bruce Girdwood will be judging.  He’s a great photographer and a very experienced and PSNZ-certified judge.  He convened the recent panel which selected the Open Projected Images for NATEX.

Bruce will be providing constructive comments and ratings on 24 print entries and a record 29 digital images. 12 of the digital entries are from novice grade, which is great to see.  Actually, they will all be great to see. Don’t miss it.

PSNZ National Convention

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

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See the information and reminder below – time to register for the PSNZ National Convention if you haven’t already done so.

I can vouch for the friendliness and hospitality of the people. And for the delicious oysters. I spent last weekend in Invercargill to observe the NATEX Selection process, and learn as much as possible about how it works, since KCPS will run NATEX in 2013.

Speaking of NATEX, the 2012 results are just out.  The selectors set a high standard, with just 114 of 604 open projected image entries selected, 102 of 414 open prints, 80 of 370 nature projected images, and 55 of 187 nature prints.   Two images from KCPS members were selected – Shona Jaray with an open print of “The Coalpit Dam” and me with an open print of “Incoming“.

Guest Speaker – Monday 12 March

08 Thursday Mar 2012

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Peter Bush presenting Mark Mitchell with his award for Best Senior Photographer in NZ (courtesy Canon Media Awards and infonews.co.nz)

We have a real treat in store for our meeting at 7:30 pm on Monday 12 March. Our guest speaker will be NZ Herald Photographer, Mark Mitchell. Mark won the “Photography – Senior Best Portfolio of Six Pictures” category in the 2011 Canon Media Awards. His portfolio of six images can be seen at the NZ Herald site, with other details and photos at infonews.co.nz .

In his presentation, Mark will share some of what it’s like in his profession these days, including the increasing role of video as well as stills.

Don’t miss this meeting!

KCPS Summer Salon Entries Due

Entries are due by Monday – up to two prints (either colour or monochrome), and up to two digital images (up to 1600 pixels wide and up to 1200 pixels high).  Please use the brand-new online entry system to submit full details of your entry and upload your digital images, then bring along your prints to the meeting.

New Zealand Camera 2012

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

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Notice from PSNZ:

The New Zealand Camera team wish to advise that copies of New Zealand Camera 2012 can now be ordered on the PSNZ web site at a cost of $40.90 plus distribution costs. If you wish to order a copy of the book, please go here.

Meg Errington
Co-ordinator
New Zealand Camera 2012

P.S. From Neil .. it’s a very good publication with lots of wonderful images including, um, one from me (Orkney Vista) and one from Peter Beddek (Front Row).

Development Group Report & AV Production

07 Wednesday Mar 2012

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Picture of people taking pictures of people taking pictures of ..

We had an excellent turnout of 15 people for the first meeting of the year.  Since it was such a lovely evening, we took photos out on the balcony and down by the river first, and then went inside for Murray’s informative presentation about the basics of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and exposure adjustment.  A lively discussion followed, which moved into the subject of audiovisuals.

Next Session – Audiovisuals

The plan for the next session (Monday 2 April) is for a kind of “show and tell” on audiovisuals.  Those (who wish to) should prepare an AV of up to two minutes, with up to 30 images. Don’t forget the rule of thumb that each image should be displayed for no longer than around 4 seconds. Each AV will be shown, and then the author will explain how they did it.

For those on Windows who don’t already have some kind of Audiovisual programme, Windows Live Moviemaker from Microsoft looks quite good, and is a free download.  You need to be on either Windows Vista or Windows 7 for this, though.

If you are on Windows XP then something different called Windows Movie Maker should already be installed in your system if you have updated to Windows XP Service Pack 2, and is worth a try.

Feel free to add comments below if there is other software you prefer to use to make AVs – free or otherwise. As a Mac person I use and like Fotomagico, but there are many different packages available.

Shona Succeeds Again in Canon Online

04 Sunday Mar 2012

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Congratulations to Shona Jaray, who has placed again in the first round for 2012 of Canon Online, coming fifth with her image “Fading Light on the Hawkduns”.

The judge, Aliah Jan FPSNZ, commented:

“This place is so beautiful and the photographer seems to have captured the soul of this place with this evening shot. I love the soft feel to this image, it is relaxing to look at and yet if you choose to, there are heaps of little treasures in the image to explore if you look deeper. The lighting is perfect and the the whole image well controlled in all aspects.”

It is no mean feat to get into the top 10 for the Canon Online –  the judge also said “I could have easily selected 30 images that would be Honours images from the 115 images entered.” Well done, Shona!

First Development Group Meeting Monday

04 Sunday Mar 2012

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Don’t forget that Monday night is the first meeting, for this year, of the Development Group.  Murray Woolcock has planned out the year’s programme to take people from the very basics of using your camera through to post-processing to make those WOW! images.

The Development Group meets at 7.30pm on the first Monday of the month from March to November in the same place as the regular KCPS meetings, i.e., the Otaihanga Boating Club.

For the first meeting Murray will present a brief powerpoint covering the basics of exposure control including shutter speed, aperture, ISO and exposure compensation.

Then we will go outside and try out these techniques with our own cameras.

We have it on good authority that the weather is going to be great, so come along!  This is a great opportunity to learn from some of the more experienced members!

Matting Meeting Report, etc.

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Herman doing a demo

We had another excellent turnout of 35 members last Monday night.  The photo shows Herman demonstrating his technique to just some of those present.

Hugh Scott also explained his setup with the aid of a presentation, and I matted a print on the spot (with just a few rough edges).

Speaking of Resolution

In my recent post on digital resolution for our salons, I mentioned the Nikon D800 with a 36 megapixel sensor.  Now that’s been topped by, of all things, a cameraphone.

Check out dpreview’s coverage of the newly announced Nokia 808 with a 41 (FORTY-ONE) megapixel sensor. Where will it end?

Online Submission for the KCPS Summer Salon Now Live

Following the successful test-phase for Online Salon Entry, the system is now going live.

I’ve removed the “captcha” for now – the test to make sure this isn’t just a spam-bot filling out the form. It was causing problems for a couple of people, and we may not need it.  We’ll see how it goes.

And since it’s all a new system, don’t worry if you do manage to mess up things when you do your entry – just try again and leave a comment about what happened.

Matting Matters & A Touch Early

27 Monday Feb 2012

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Our next meeting is tonight at 7:30 pm at the Otaihanga Boating Club.  The main event will be a workshop on matting prints. Herman Visser will explain how he goes about it, and others including me will also demonstrate their techniques.

Photoshop Touch

At supper time if anyone wants to have a play with Adobe Photoshop Touch on an iPad 2, I downloaded and installed it yesterday. It appears that I managed to grab it in a narrow window of opportunity when Apple accidentally put it in the app store briefly, ahead of the planned release time on Monday US time.

Online Salon Entry

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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Starting with the KCPS 2012 Summer Salon in March, we plan to use a new online entry system. This will enable all details for your digital and print images to be filled out online, and digital images to be uploaded.

This is being done using an online service call JotForm, so don’t worry if you are taken away from our site for the entry form to be completed.

For the rest of February we are going to be testing this out.  This is both so members can try it without actually submitting entries and images, and so we can iron out any problems before it goes live in March.

To try it – just go to “SALON ENTRY” on the top menu of the KCPS website.  Or just click here.

And please let us know what you think.