Couple of good internet sites for New Bees I have found http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/enjoydslr/

http://http://www.photography-cafe.com/forum/index.php?action=profile

Please, please do not take this as a whinge but you did ask for my thoughts. Great clicking.

Bill Lewis

For those members who did not see Malcolm’s email dated 4 March, I recreate it here.

"Just to let those members know who were not at Thursday’s meeting Harlow Photographic Society has been awarded a lottery grant enabling us to buy a digital projector, a laptop computer, a computer & scanner profiler and a copy of Photoshop CS2. Our application only took five weeks from the time of completion but took Graham Woolmer and myself many hours of complicated form filling-in."

Whilst talking about emails it would be useful if members’ email addresses were listed in the Viewfinder. That way the addresses would always be available to members and could be updated regularly. Before I include them though I would ask any members who would rather their email address was not included to let me know.

If any member has news about anything pertaining to HPS or its members, please let me know and I will include it in this occasional column.

Hello everyone I’m back again on the trail of all those digital manipulators. What a pleasant surprise no back-lash from the masses to my last article, I can only assume everyone agrees with me – no surprise there as my wife is often telling me I am always right! Or is it perhaps apathy rules which I suppose is a symptom of the digital user "point and click no effort needed let’s see what happens".

Anyway to all my fans I have been giving a great deal of thought on how to embrace all those with chip enhanced boxes and begin to recognise I represent a minority group from a past prehistoric age. It is not the pictures you people are taking with these contraptions that I have issue, but the sheer scale of image manipulation that goes on at the post production stage. I got to thinking about the old adage "if you can’t beat them join them" and defiantly I will not be going that far but why not meet half way; lets recognise what is happening and embrace this work in a class of its own? My suggestion is that for next years programme a new competition be formatted along the lines that entries will only be considered where computer manipulation has taken place and the entry is composed from a minimum of two individual images combined – what do you think it may make for an interesting competition?

While I am in this concessionary mood I have yet another idea / observation (that’s me, management full of ideas no action!), before long the club is going to be in need of a digital projector and given the finances reported at the last AGM it my prove a bit of a struggle to fund. While visiting other clubs in the region I have picked up on the idea that they too are looking at digital projectors by making an application through the lottery fund, what a good idea if one of the digital users among us can fill the application forms and run with it for the club; might be worth a try?

That’s it for now but fear not I will be back looking for converts to the cause.

Tony Woods

The BBC Wildlife of the Year Exhibition is still on until 23 April at the Natural History Museum. For those members who have not seen it you can get a flavour of it from its website on www.nhm.ac.uk/wildphoto but it is well worth seeing in person.

For members interested in Lawrence of Arabia the Imperial War Museum, London, SE1, has a ‘visual biography’ of TE Lawrence to support a new book by Malcolm Brown.

I expect by now that a few people will have been wondering who the ‘new guy’ is who appears every so often and then isn’t seen again for a couple of weeks or so. Let me explain.

I live a little outside the club’s catchment area, Salisbury in fact, but my work brings me to Harlow at least twice a week. My aim is to split my week so that I am at Harlow for a Thursday night but occasionally my work requires me to be elsewhere hence the non-appearances.

Having been a visitor on several weeks since November, I have taken steps to become a member. I should point out that I found your £1 visitor fee extremely good value as the club obviously has a wide range of top class photographers and is geographically positioned to get the very best of the Federation’s judges and lecturers and after enjoying some spectacular laser-triggered macro photography recently, I knew this was the club for me.

I am no stranger to photography. Back in the early eighties, my father, some friends and I joined the local adult education centre (in Mountain Ash, South Wales) to get some use out of our cameras. Before long the instructor found that we were teaching him more than he was us so we (and the instructor) formed a photographic society with me as secretary. Within three weeks, we had a reasonable sized membership and someone told us about the advantages of joining the Welsh Photographic Federation [WPF]. We had our first competition judged by the federation’s chairman who went on to give us a ‘welcome’ presentation.

The club is still going strong after nearly 25 years and my father is still its president. Many of the original members have stuck with the club and have become some of the more familiar names in the WPF competition and exhibition winner’s lists.

As for me, well I got involved with the federation as its competition secretary and as a judge and lecturer. I was responsible for the 150^th anniversary of photography exhibition held at Margam Park in Port Talbot (named after Fox’s uncle) and I still have a copy of the exhibition on slide should anyone wish to see it.

I left Wales twelve years ago following available work opportunities and joined the Andover club. I trialled for the Southern Fed’s judging list and was recognised as being sufficiently experienced for their top ‘A’ list. As a result, I am probably one of only a few judges and lecturers who are listed with two different federations not joined together by boundary.

My successes are varied. I won a number of club competitions (including the very first mentioned earlier) and gained several entries and awards at federation exhibitions and salons as well as at RPS level where after gaining my LRPS, I went on to try video and won the Royal’s Film and Video award at my first attempt. With their meeting rooms in London’s West End, I withdrew from the F&V group before the next competition.

Currently, I am a digi-convert but still like to keep my slide work busy. I won’t go into detail here as this is a topic for another ‘Viewfinder’ edition but most of my awards at international level have resulted from slide sandwiching, a skill well suited to my creative side. I could try it with digital but for me somehow that is cheating. Digital is fine for other forms of creative photography but the whole point of a sandwich is to create the ‘third image’ from the original two without any manipulation outside of orientation and cropping.

Going digital has helped enormously however by allowing me to gain access to images that I had spoiled back in the darkroom days. With the use of a quality negative scanner, I have been able to print some of early successful shots which had been spoiled at the development stage by grit on the film squeegee for instance.

The photograph that accompanies this article has been a favourite of mine for years but the scratch down the centre was impossible to fully remove during printing. I knew that if I waited long enough, technology would come to the rescue and it has finally arrived. Though I am still unhappy with it, I hope to get a worthwhile image ready for next season.

My hope now is that I can re-open my neg file and start producing the top quality images that I nearly put in the bin and give pleasure to the members of Harlow club in sharing some of the more creative times of my personal photographic history and help you to win or retain the club awards that the club richly deserves.

Graham Brown

For Sale

Alan Norris has a Canon Powershot G5 for sale. It includes all software, an extra battery and superb 35 – 105 zoom lens. £200. Interested? Contact Alan on 012 7932 5781.

That’s it for this edition but I would ask for your comments on a few ideas I have for future editions.

Firstly, as you can see this edition is monochrome. It would be good to have future editions with some colour in them. But this does put the cost up so I’m suggesting creating an e-newsletter. Basically, this would be the Viewfinder emailed to whoever wanted it. The advantage would be less hard-copy would need to be printed thus lowering costs. The e-newsletter could be put on our website for potential new members to read.

I would like to get a ‘Tech Talk’ section up and running. There are several members who have recently bought new equipment and I’m sure the membership would enjoy and benefit from hearing how their ‘goodies’ are performing or not as the case may be. Also, we could have long-term reviews of certain equipment. Indeed, is there a member who would like to become the Technical Expert and could answer any questions from members through these pages? Hope so.

Another idea is a ‘Letters to the Editor’ column. This would be a forum for discussion between members – a chance to complement or complain.

Do let me know your thoughts on these ideas.

Two members go to Bishop’s Stortford for a drink. They have a good time, take in a few pubs and go to a club. Three o’clock in the morning they’re a bit worse for wear and want to get home to Harlow. They try phoning for a cab but there are none available so they weave their way to a bus stop and check the timetable. They find the buses stopped running hours before so one says to the other "It’s not a problem, come on let’s go to the bus depot and we’ll borrow a bus". The other member isn’t happy and says "We can’t do that. Who’s going to drive?". "That’s no problem either. I’ll drive" says the other.

At the bus depot, one goes inside whilst the other one stands guard outside, listening nervously. From inside the depot he hears a bus start up….and then stop. Then he hears another bus start up…and that one stops too. Then another….and another. By know there’re clouds of diesel fumes coming from the depot. This goes on for about half and hour but eventually he hears a bus start up and sees it come trundling out of the depot with his mate happily in the driving seat. As the bus pulls up he says to the driver "You took your time – what was all that racket?"

His mate replies "It’s always the same with buses from Stortford. The bus to Harlow was right at the back".

Paul Major