Good Morning Everyone
Well we have a really pleasant surprise for you today as Maru has kindly agreed to edit a guest edition of our newsletter ! Huge thanks to Maru for a super Newsletter😃👍
It's great to have our members contributing in this way and we have a few more who have also volunteered whose contributions you will be able to read in the coming weeks - volunteers always welcome !
Enjoy
Derek
Hello and welcome everyone to the 19th edition of the PCC Newsletter. First of all, I hope that all of you and your families are well and sound. As a guest editor and being the first time that I am doing a newsletter, I was quite excited at the prospect of writing for all our lovely readers, and then I realised that choosing a topic was not that straightforward! I hope that this edition will fulfil your weekly expectations and thanks to the committee for this opportunity. Let's continue. Many congratulations to Jeanette for winning the Street Scene of the Lockdown fun competition. With 13 very good images to compare against, it was hard to pick only one, don’t you think? Next week's competition will be My Garden, with the latest hand in date at midday on 29/7/20, so don’t forget to enter your image and continue supporting your club.
My time during lockdown was very hard, as for all of us, but I have been healthy and very fortunate to be able to keep working from home without need to be furloughed. I am very happy that lockdown has been lifted for almost everybody, but I will continue working from home probably until November. The University has planned the return of people working into laboratories and those doing field work, and for all of us using only a computer, won’t be necessary until further notice. So, my situation hasn’t changed and as I have to use my time at home, what better than give myself an opportunity to practice my indoor photography. Shutter speed, aperture, light conditions are some of the skills I really would like to learn well, so I put hands on and tried to produce some images with the topic of reflection. Here are some results:
f-stop: f/10 Exposure time: 1/13 ISO: 640 + 0.3 step No flash
Same settings, but changing position
f-stop: f/5.6 Exposure time: 1/160 ISO: 640 + 0.3 step No flash
Any of these are very good, certainly not for competition, but I am happy to have had the chance to practice. I think that, to master these skills I only need to practice and practice and practice more! No damage was ever done for practising I dare say.
Reflections as a topic gives many opportunities to be creative, and photographer Simon Bond has taken this topic further by using crystal balls. Here some of his pictures:
He has made his trademark out of using the reflection in spheres of different sizes, and the results are quite impressive. If you want to read more about this technique, you just need to follow this link: http://creative-photography-school.com/
This coming weekend promises good chances of rain, so maybe a good opportunity to practice more indoor photography.
Have a very happy weekend and keep safe. All the best, Maru