Local club for everyone interested in photography
Members had a really enjoyable night sharing their images from the recent assignment ‘Red‘.
It was informative and fun discussing our shots, and there were some really imaginative ones with a special mention for Linda Smith, David Haycock and Rob Rogers.
In a change to our original programme, we welcomed speaker Mike Caithness to the club.
He gave members a talk on ‘The Artitecture of Valencia’. Yes you read it right!….Artitecture. He shared images from two trips to Valencia.
The first half of the evening included some marvellous shots of the stunning modern architecture. It was interesting to see the futuristic buildings at different times of day too, with the evening shots particularly eye-catching due to the beautiful reflections in the surrounding water.
In the second half, he presented images of the numerous and wide ranging variety of street art. So imaginative, skilled and colourful…and Mike managed to show them through his own eyes through his careful choice of composition.
We all had an enjoyable night on what was the last of this season before our AGM, and I think it’s fair to say there were many of us keen to make a trip to Valencia ourselves.
If you haven’t been already, look it up!
Our ‘Image of the Year’ competition was the final challenge for members this season. Unfortunately our judge wasn’t able to make it on the night, but members were not deterred….we quickly prepared some voting slips and judged the entries ourselves! After the results were announced members were able to talk about their own submitted images, which everyone found really interesting and informative.
The winning image was ‘Sunrise through Forth Rail Bridge’ by Maria Djumic. Not being able to sleep well one night, Maria had looked at the weather forecast and noticed favourable conditions. So she decided what better than to head out with her camera. Lucky for us as she caught this stunning shot.
Val Stuart picked up second and third place with ‘Osprey’ and ‘Storm on Black Sand Beach Iceland’ respectively. Both images presented challenges in the taking. ‘Osprey’ was a very early rise and sitting in a hide just waiting to get that perfect shot. With the beach image, it was brave just to take a camera out!
Well done to other members who also had commended images: Steve Gorman with ‘Tower’, Maggi Doak with ‘Bass Rock Reflection’ and John Reglinski with ‘Catastrophe’.
We were treated to a wonderful bonanza of Scottish wildlife photographs and video during an entertaining talk by professional photographer Gordon Rae.
Opening with a terrific intimate video of otters hunting and playing, he went on to show photographs taken during his early days mastering the craft, sharing how he was inspired by the wildlife in and around his own farm.
It was clear that his immersion in a natural environment through his farming career honed his field-craft and the results that we saw were truly wonderful.
From here, he drew on ventures across the length and breadth of Scotland in search of both iconic wildlife as well as lesser known mammals and birds, also offering great photographic opportunities.
It was a very interactive talk and Gordon kindly shared many useful tips for technique, as well as hot spots to find certain species at their most photogenic during the calendar year.
A big thanks to Gordon for his candour and humour and for sharing his magnificent collection of images with us.
One of our own club committee members, Alastair White, gave us a talk entitled “Restoring the Past”.
Alastair drew on his transformation of a collection of historical photographs primarily from a major project he had undertaken to commemorate the supporters and participants in one of several US flying training camps established during WW2.
It was mesmerising to watch the whole transformative process, from using a lightbox to take a digital photograph of the original black and white image to deploying AI based tools available in Photoshop to “colourise” the digitised image, bringing it to life with incredible accuracy.
Moreover, we got a very interesting history lesson on how many famous Hollywood stars played a major role in financing the training of American WW2 aviators.
It was a superb demonstration and we all thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
As well as for his talk, a big thanks also goes to Alastair for kindly bringing along some used camera equipment for sale with all proceeds going to club funds.
On Thursday, we held another inter-club “Match an Image” (MAI) competition, this time against Haddington CC.
Our fortunes improved considerably on this occasion – our third and final MAI of the season – with us winning the very friendly joust.
It was a cracking evening, full of lots of humorous banter and cheeky heckling as both teams tried to persuade the judge, John Fowler from Musselburgh CC, to call in favour of our sparring images.
The evening’s success was in no small part down to John’s imagination, keeping a very open mind to identify similarities between the two clubs’ competing images beyond core subject matter.
We also thank him for standing in at the last minute to judge for us.
A perfect MAI to finish on!
Another great turnout for the latest assignment, with 18 members attending the evening. There were 40 prints submitted on the topic of birds, and our members did the judging.
We had a good turnout of members for our ‘away’ interclub Match-an-Image Competition with Musselburgh Camera Club on Thursday 12 January.
Thanks to all those who travelled on the night.
Both clubs had some great images to admire, but as with all Match-an-Image competitions it really was good fun too, with lots of judge heckling from both sides.
Musselburgh were triumphant in the end with the final score: Musselburgh 25, North Berwick 24.
There’s always next year to redeem ourselves!
We met for our ‘Chairman’s Challenge’ internal competition on Thursday 15th December. The theme was ‘Four Seasons’, and our judge for the evening was Neil Spowart who did a fine job of critiquing our images.
On Thursday 1 December, we had our first interclub competition since starting back. It was so refreshing to meet with members from another club again, and we all enjoyed seeing each other’s images.