The Pleasure's All Mine - Jan 23 2009

Well over 30 members attended last Friday's Barry Camera Club meeting and were rewarded with a most entertaining presentation by Graham Hodgkiss ARPS DPAGB APAGB from Aston and Erdington and also Cheltenham camera club. The talk, sponsored by Lion Fine Print, was entitled "The Pleasure's All Mine" and was based around almost 100 beautiful mounted images taken by Graham . He admitted that he used new technology, like manipulation in Photoshop software, to the absolute minimum, generally only removing parts of the image and never adding something that was not in the original. Graham's sense of humour was a great contributing factor to the enjoyment of his presentation in which he freely admitted that he always talks to his camera before adjusting its settings and advised members to forget about taking multiple readings or using histograms on digital cameras, to assess exposure. "Just set the camera to one stop under exposed and all will be OK" he recommended. He admitted to never using flash , just increasing the ISO setting is all that is necessary he said. All his images were taken in JPEG format and he defied critics who claimed that it was necessary to use the RAW format to achieve maximum sharpness.

He clearly liked taking candid portraits of subjects as well as landscapes many of which he had taken in poor weather and/or snow in either North Wales of Norfolk. His monochrome images showed a mastery of his printing technique which had moved on from the old darkroom methods to a digital printer. He clearly thought a lot about the quality of the paper used for each print and admitted that he hardly ever used gloss paper these days.

For many shots he found that the image was improved by moving items around before firing the shutter ...easier than taking things out or moving them in Photoshop later.

His light hearted approach to photography was evident in every way and made the evening go very quickly for all those who attended. Chairwoman Barbra Archdale-Smith gave the vote of thanks to Graham and hoped that this, although his first visit to the club, would not be the last.

Next week's meeting on Friday 30th January 2009 is the monthly competition night for which the judge is Lyn James ARPS a recent speaker at the club. Full details of the club's activities and location are on the club website at www.barrycameraclub.org.uk and potential new members will be most welcome to come along for a few free meeting before deciding if they wish to join.