H.P.S.

   H.P.S.

Issue 99 October 2006

As a long-time member of the Society I think the first night of our season this year was one of the best I have ever witnessed. From the moment I walked in there was a buzz about the place; old and new members all mingling and acquainting themselves with one another. When the time came, Malcolm, with his magic 50p to quieten the buzz, opened the meeting, welcoming the new members to the club and making the formal announcements. Then it was Maggie’s turn to congratulate the winners and runners-up of last season’s competitions, and present the trophies and certificates.

…GET OUT THERE and take the pictures.

As we all know that’s modern technology and it has done photography the world of good. It’s brought a load of creativity to our hobby, which we didn’t know we had. The first thing you’ve got to do though - and some of us might have been lazy about this in the past - you have to GET OUT THERE and take the pictures.

Thanks a lot Tony for such a good start to the season.

Harry Fox

It’s late October already: how did that happen without me noticing the passing of time? In this issue Tony Hepworth explains how he started his summer project of photographing the bridges over the River Thames in London, the results of which he presented on the first meeting of the year. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there but, according to Harry Fox’s article (above), and other members I have spoken to, Tony’s presentation and images were excellent. Harry’s article is very complimentary, too, for the whole club membership, and I think we should all give ourselves a combined pat on the back… right, that’s enough patting. Tony Hepworth (in his capacity as Webmaster) has also given us some interesting website addresses to check out.

Harry also makes a very good point: it is all too easy to get out of the habit of “taking photos”. So, now the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is upon us, there are no excuses; get out and about and capture all those early morning shots, those low-light photos or even night-time images.

Members who knew Dave Neal when he was an HPS member (or have visited him at his B&B in Wales), should know that Heather and Gordon Clarke visited Dave and his wife, Gillian, at their new house. Although still in Wales it is totally different from their previous residence. Heather’s article in this issue gives us a flavour.

Paul Major

We've had a great start to our new season;  new members - welcome again to you all and hope you're feeling a little more at home by now!  some good lectures;  I particularly enjoyed Dr John Earle and his lovely wife, Fiona, who gave us a very down-to-earth and refreshing look at Nepal;  lots of enthusiasm and audience participation during our evenings; then  Arthur Davis gave us a wondeful example of enthusiasm into our more elderly years with his images on churches.

If our new members would like any advice on any photographic matters I know many of our "oldies" would be only too willing to assist, so bring in some of your photos or whatever and ask away!

Thanks to all the people who have helped with the equipment, it does make the evening flow more easily if as many as possible join in, both at the beginning and end of the evening.

Good luck to you all in the competitions.

Maggie Tear

 A Summer Project

Summer at last – yuky! Green, green, green, green and even more green. Even the sky looks green at this time of year. Fun for velvia, but not much else. The only thing for it was a “Project”. Something to amuse myself with and give me a break from the kids, not to mention give my brand spanking new Canon 5D a serious work out. As many of the popular magazines suggest, it is a good idea to have a project to work on, so as to avoid the frustrations of not having anything to point your (brand spanking new) camera at. With this advice in mind, I set about a project to photograph the bridges of London at dusk, hoping to get from Tower Bridge to Putney by the end of the summer – some chance!

With the sun not setting till well after 10pm at the height of summer, I had plenty of time to get down to London and find my viewpoint, having first handed the children over to my wife on her return from work! The trouble with night photography is you only get about twenty or so minutes when the light is workable, so at most your only going to cover a couple of  viewpoints from the same location, unless you get a glorious sunset and then you have about an hour before the light is at it’s best.

The first trip down, was to the Millennium walkway on the South Bank, which I had been to a few weeks earlier with Tony Perryman, all be it well before dusk.

This time I was there about an hour before sunset, giving myself plenty of time to sort out my composition and exposure etc before starting to make exposures. Using a Canon 5D and a Sigma 15-30mm lens, in manual mode, and using the histogram to gauge the exposure, I underexposed by 11/2 stops to hold the highlights and retain some detail in the shadows, which I would later be able to tweak in Photoshop. At this point I should mention that I’m using a tripod, cable release and mirror lock up, as the exposures are commonly 25 seconds or more and an ISO of 50 to insure continuous tone in sky and minimal noise in the shadow areas. As well as a shot from directly under the bridge I also had time to work on another composition from the side of the bridge, using the bridge as a lead in to St Paul’s – a shot that I’ve seen at club before, it has to be said. Thanks to Graham Woolmer for that one! I did shoot from the west side of the bridge though!

As anyone who has attempted night time photography will tell you, there is only a window of some10-20 minutes when conditions are just right. The reason for this is that to record shadow and highlight detail, you need enough ambient light to balance the lights of the buildings; too dark a sky and the lights will dominate the frame, leaving large areas of blown out detail; too light a sky and there will be no contrast between the buildings and the sky. I have found that the right time to shoot is well before your eye tells you and that the camera records light in a different way to your own perception. I ended up shooting about 10mins before it looked right to the eye, as this was when the playback looked at its best. By the time your eye is signaling the shot, its normally too late!

The next target was Tower Bridge as it seemed the most obvious and I’d seen enough images to not have to work too hard on the composition. I settled for the dolphin statue as a foreground interest with the bridge dominating the background. This shot requires you to stand in front of the Marriott (I think) Hotel on the N/E embankment. Unfortunately I had reckoned without the Hotel security guards taking offence to my tripod. Apparently you can use a camera but not on a tripod! – why? The security guy was very polite but insistent, so I had no choice but to dismantle my gear and trudge off with my tail between my legs. To be honest, with all the security alerts this summer, attracting the attention of the police etc had been one of my main concerns for this project.

Luckily I had set up quickly and managed to get a few exposures made before my visit was prematurely curtailed. However, I now had to decide where to set up before the light faded and the evening turned into a wasted trip. As I walked south over the bridge I saw the lights of “Ken’s Palace”, gleaming at me from the south embankment and I noticed a long stretch of blue lighting leading towards it – a seed had been sown!

When I arrived, it was apparent that the blue line wasn’t leading directly towards the building, so it took a little more time than I would have liked to set up a composition that gave that illusion. The sky was darkening fast now, so I had to work quickly before a good balance of light was totally unachievable. Although the main part of the image was within the dynamic range of the 5D’s sensor, I could see from the playback that including Tower Bridge, with its strong lighting, was beyond the realms of possibility, without hours of work in Photoshop. In the end I abandoned the bridge and just concentrated on the Mayors “folly” as a compromise. All in all, this trip was probably the most frustrating, as I wasted most of the best light walking back over the bridge. On the way back home I decided that this would be worth another visit as the area has so many possibilities. Putney Bridge was looking further away than ever!

My next trip saw me heading towards Docklands and the city lights, to try my luck with the big towers of Canary Wharf. After spending some time looking at an old A-Z of London I came to the conclusion that somewhere along the Rotherhithe embankment, on the south side, would offer the best vantage point for the shot I had in mind.

When I arrived at the spot it became apparent that this part of the embankment, although being public, was primarily used as access to the council estates that line the river at this point. Further more, the sections of walkway between the estates had been closed, presumably to stop rampaging gangs of youths, from the different estates, engaging in open warfare! This was the only time during my six or so visits to London that I actually felt unsafe and I would advise anyone making this trip to take a friend – or ten! Despite my obvious concerns, I kept my nerve, and spent the best part of 2 hours in the area.

For some reason I had envisaged the towers lining the shore on the other side but in reality they lay behind some local housing on the Isle of Dogs and at first impression it seemed that I was wasting my time - these flats had never appeared in any photograph I had seen! As the light started to fade, then so did the apartments, until they were hardly noticeable against the bright lights of the city towers. This is one of the beauties of night time photography in the city; a lot of the “clutter” of cityscapes disappears as the light fades into twilight. After numerous exposures trying different compositions and variations, including some near daylight shots– I was particularly worried about the very bright banners on the tops of the buildings - for detail later in Photoshop if I needed it; I packed up and started back for the car. This is usually a bad idea, as you can be sure that packing away the camera is a sign that another shot is just around the corner! In this case I just turned for a final look at the evenings work and noticed that a street lamp was illuminating a walkway sign and a life-buoy and would likely make for an interesting lighting contrast with the city lights behind. At about this time a local youth club began discharging over excited “hormones” on to the street behind me, so I quickly set up and made a composition as best I could before releasing the shutter for a few bracketed exposures – there was no time for the nicety of histograms on this occasion. I headed back for the car in double quick time and headed back for home and a well earned glass of wine! Strangely enough, this final rushed shot remains one of my favorite from that evening’s session.

By this time I had filled all the memory cards in my possession and it was clearly time for a bit of home processing and some time spent backing up files before setting out on any further adventures. After spending a few evenings with compact flash cards littering the carpet and images crowding my desktop, it became obvious that my faithful computer, for over five years now, was no longer man enough for the job. The increase of file sizes to nearly 40mb from the 5D was slowing processing down to a snails pace. Any attempt at working in layers was met by instant revolt by the processor and it became clear I would have to find the money for a new “box”. After much research on the web I settled on a machine from “Golden Electronics”, for which I was able to specify the individual components, thereby creating a computer best suited for photographic work. As a matter of interest, my last computer was the proud owner of a 13 gigabyte hard drive – which I was reliably informed, would be more than I would ever need – as well as 128 megabyte of RAM. In contrast the new machine has 2 Gigabyte of RAM and two hard drives – one of 200 gigabytes and one of 300 gigabytes – all for less than half the price of the previous computer! Surely this will last more than five years – it’s hard to imagine how you could need more memory.

But I digress. Having eventually discharged all my memory cards to the computer and backed them up onto CD, it was time to head back to the city for another stab in the dark! Despite being happy with the previous session, I decided on another trip to docklands to see if I could find a better location for the shoot. This was to become a very fragmented evening, as I cruised around the south side of the river (like some latter-day Jack the Ripper) from the Thames Barrier to Tower Bridge. An early success at the Thames Barrier, where a beautiful sunset gained immediate access to my memory card, left me with enough time to make Docklands with time to spare. Unfortunately I couldn’t better the position I had enjoyed the previous week and decided to make a last minute run for Tower Bridge, where I had unfinished business from my previous trip.

I was on the bridge in plenty of time for the best of the light and managed to cover several viewpoints before retiring for the evening.  As the N/W side of the bridge was out of bounds, I concentrated on the roadway of the bridge, using light trails and blurred, ghost like figures, to enhance the compositions. Although I had no time to investigate different angles etc during daylight hours, my previous trip had put me in a good position to work quickly and efficiently and I managed to get a set of very pleasing images from the nights work.

What turned out to be my last visit so far, mainly due to the weather I might add, was to Westminster, and the vaulted halls of government. By this time I was in full stride and fully expected to come back with some real “crackers”. Having seen some stunning images in a recent magazine article I had lots of ideas and was raring to go! Alas, when I got there, Mr. McAlpine had decided to put scaffolding along both sides of the bridge and compliment that with “over the top” boarding, cram bang full of advertisements. This, in effect, ruled out several of the shots I wanted to take a look at and left me scrambling for new ideas. In the end I lined up with all the other tourists and took shots from directly opposite the palace – which does not lend itself to a very dynamic composition. By doing this, of course, I set myself up as a magnet for every couple that wanted a romantic snap of themselves in front of the Palace of Westminster, as well as anyone who wanted advice on photographing at night! In the end I did get some reasonable shots, although not the ones I had envisaged and I certainly got to meet some lovely folk from far away places – mainly America and Japan!

Putney Bridge still looks many visits away, but there’s always the rest of this year and beyond to get to it. Over all it was great fun working through the project and I certainly learnt a lot about low light photography. It was also great to spend some evenings back in London after a 10 year gap.

Watch this space for more reports from the road to Putney!

Tony Hepworth

Grapevine

Congratulations, again, to Jo and John Cleall on the birth of their second granddaughter in almost as many months. Mabel was born on Sunday 1 October to their younger daughter, Jackie, and her partner Gel. Jo assures us that there will be no further grandchildren born to the (burgeoning) Cleall clan… well, not in 2006 anyway.

(Heather and Gordon Clarke have visited Dave and Gillian Neal at their new house in Wales (see Heather’s article below). Dave would love to hear from members old and new – speak to Heather and Gordon for more information and Dave’s new contact details.)

We set off for our journey in high anticipation; cameras packed and tripods lodged safely in the boot.  Gordon drove and I clutched the map. We travelled through many little towns scattered through the countryside, these gradually got smaller and scarcer until all we saw were a few scattered

If we broke down now, we thought, how would we explain where we were?

 houses here and there pretending to be villages. The roads were by now fairly narrow with not much to look at in any direction except fields and hedges. Eventually, the road became single track, though to be fair it did widen out to two lanes later on. We spied a small wooden sign half-hidden in the hedge and turned right into a tiny unmade-up lane. As the weather had been fairly damp the ruts were filled with water and the hedges on either side just missed brushing the wing mirrors. After three-quarters of a mile of appearing to go nowhere in particular, we began to think that my usually impeccable map reading had let us down. If we broke down now, we thought, how would we explain where we were? One field looked the same as another, and there had been so many twists and turns to get this far, we would never be able to recall the journey. As we rounded a bend we were relieved to see a gate with a sign on it. We turned in. What a transformation; huge rolling, green lawns led up a wide driveway, slowly inclining past a small lake and numerous other ponds, and there at the top, a small perfectly formed slate cottage with Gillian Neal waiting at the doorway to greet us. David and Gillian had said they wanted to move “into the country”, and you could not get more “country” than this: a beautiful cottage, loads of large outbuildings, enormous gardens on all sides, more ponds, a field on either side of the house and a back garden that disappeared into the distance. We sat in the porch-cum-conservatory-cum-dining room with a welcome mug of coffee and gazed out on the front gardens. A mother duck swam out across the lake with 10 of her day-old chicks; a moorhen scuttled out of her way; overhead red kites swirled and swooped looking for prey. WOW! - eat your heart out all you Essex and Herts-ites! And good luck to David and Gillian in their new venture!

Heather Clarke

There is no “From the President’s Studio” article in this issue as Malcolm has been on holiday. Welcome back to him, and thanks to Maggie for stepping in so splendidly in his absence.

Web Watch

As most of you know by now, Steve Boocock handed over the website development to me at the end of last season. My first words must be a huge thank you to Steve for getting such a complicated project off the ground. You will only know how much effort it takes to start a new website if you try it yourself! Since then I have been slaving over a hot keyboard, trying to perfect Steve’s template.

At the time of writing we have 14 photographers, contributing an average of 12 shots each, all presented in their own Galleries. I would love to have more, as I think this directly affects potential members’ perception of the club. For those of you who have presented images – a big thank you – I couldn’t do it without you, but please consider offering some text, as at the moment I’m making most of it up myself! For those of you who haven’t had a chance yet – YOUR CLUB NEEDS YOU. It’s really important that the club represents its full range of abilities to potential members, so as to be as inclusive as possible. Whether you win competitions or not, is not the criteria for you to have your own gallery. Show others what you do, that’s the important bit! Well, that’s my rant over with! Here are some statistics: -

The front page has attracted 488 visitors

The gallery page has attracted 322 visitors

Individual galleries have attracted a total of 857 visitors

As you can see, people do not enter the site from the front page only. Google, and other search engines, can direct searchers to a specific page or indeed a part of that page!

One last thing: over the next few issues I would like to recommend a few websites that may be of interest to you all. For now I’ll start with 2 well known ones – indeed some of you will already be aware of them: -

1.               www.ephotozine.com – a great site for uploading you images and having them commented on by your peers. Also lots of photographic news, as well as reviews, techniques, favorite locations, advice and lots lots more.

2.             www.dpreview.com – the site for gear reviews and general information about new products. Features a full back catalogue of reviews and is often the first with any breaking news.

Thanks for reading this article – I’m hoping it will turn into a valuable resource for members. If you have any favourite sites or any web news, please let me know.

Webmaster (aka. Tony Hepworth)

Print Competition

On the 12 October we had this season’s first judged print competition. The judge was Brian Willet and below are the marks he awarded. As you can see, several members did very well scoring, 18s, 19s and 20s, but there are another four competitions to run yet, so it’s anyone’s guess who the eventual winners will be: Watch this space…