Photo opportunity

Verena sent in this about a beach festival which sounds interesting:

"October 27-30: The South Coast is set to sizzle with the South Coast Surf Carnival. The programme includes a national longboarding contest and kitesurfing on Scottburgh and Kelso beaches, as well as development surfing clinics and the family orientated sport of kite flying. Kiteboarder registration opens at 10am at Kelso on the Friday, with registration for longboarders at 6pm at the same venue. Registration for kite flying opens at 9am at Kelso on Saturday."

Window success

Harry has stirred his stumps and has put up a club picture board at Photo World at the Pick 'n Pay Centre in Hillcrest. Pictures chosen by popular acclamation will be posted there each month.

October outing: reportback

A great time was had by all at the Butterfly Farm last Saturday. Hopefully, in due course, we'll see other pictures taken on the outing. The butterflies were pretty elusive but I did see a lot of shots being taken of Natalie's cute daughters.

You may know that Natalie was expecting and you'll be pleased to know that the new baby has been delivered; a Sony A100 10 Mega-pixel DSLR. It has built-in anti-shake technology which looks as though it works like a bomb to reduce camera shake. Click here for a review of the camera.

The club at breakfast by Jack Fisher

Great flash exposure. Must have been taken with a Nikon !! ;-)

Click the picture to view an enlargement.

Lens reviews

Here's a link to PhotoZone which does good lens reviews. You'll also find the link on the right-hand side of each page on this blog.

Extra Outing

We had a wonderful well-attended outing today to the Butterfly Farm. Hopefully, we'll get some pictures to put up in due course. In the meantime, some of the folk who were there decided to get together again on Sunday, 22 October, to take pictures of the cyclists in the Amashovashova race. We are going to be meeting from 7pm onward at the bottom of Bothas Hill at the corner where Kassier Road leads into Old Main Road. There will be a skottel so bring something to cook for breakfast and, of course, something to drink.

Cyclist by Allan Jackson

Online Photo Albums

In the Sunday Tribune some time ago, I wrote an article on online photo albums which you can use to post your pictures on the Internet so that others can view them. You can read the article by clicking here.

In it I wrote about a new service called Picasa Web Albums which was on test and which was unique because it allows you to upload to your web album directly from the free Picasa photo organiser program on your computer. The albums are now open to all and you get 250Mb of free space to store your pictures online. Click here for more info or to sign up.

A sub-section of the committee - by Harry Lock

Library directions

Thanks to Patrick for the reminder that I didn't include directions to the Hillcrest Library in the monthly mailshot. You turn into Hospital Road. as though going to the Hillcrest Sports Club, but go past the entrance and take your first left into Delamore Road. The library is about 100m down the road on your left, in the small municipal complex.

Barrier of Spears

THE FRIENDS OF HILLCREST LIBRARY

will host an audio-visual presentation
(this will include ”Photography – the Art of Painting with Light”)
of a revised reprint of Reg Pearse’s

BARRIER OF SPEARS

by his son

MALCOLM PEARSE

Superb photography * Magnificent scenery * Exhilarating commentary

Time: 19:00
Date: Friday 3 November 2006
Place: Hillcrest Library Hall
Cost: R30.00 entrance fee
Wine and snacks will be available after the presentation

Signed copies of the book will be on sale at a discounted price.

Tickets available at Hillcrest Library or at the door.
Telephone: 031-761 5830

A car guard will be on duty

Member's picture

Here's a picture of a Blue Headed Lizard from Andrew Begg.

You can click on the picture to view an enlargement and you'll see that it has superb use of differential focus to draw attention the main subject. The back leg and body forms a nice line leading you into the picture. It's an excellent picture. One little nitpicking comment is that I would have liked to see a bit more space behind the animal and a bit less in front; that would have put the head on the intersection of thirds.

Why not leave a comment on the picture by clicking the link below.

News / October 2006 outing

* Hillcrest Library has asked us to put up a display in the library at the beginning of November to publicise the club. You are therefore all asked to contribute a small print, 5x7 or 6x8, to the display. You are welcome to mount the picture on card and put your name on it. Prints should be handed to one of the committee members at the outing to the Butterfly Farm on 21 November or dropped off at Harry Lock's home at 7 Edward Road, Hillcrest, before 29 October. The idea behind the small prints is that there will be room for more pictures, and it won't matter so much if any go missing.

* The outing this month is to the Butterfly Farm in Pietermaritzburg on 21 October. You can either meet us in the car park of the Hillcrest Sports Club at 08h30 to do the usual car sharing thing or meet us at the farm at 09h30. We'll do our photographic thing and have a meal afterwards. The cost will be R22 per person (R8 extra for the monkey house) and the meal will be extra. You can get to the farm by following the N3 around to the right of Pietermaritzburg, taking the Orthmann Road turnoff and going right over the freeway into the industrial area. The farm is well signposted.

* The next meeting is on 7^th November and we'' keep you posted about that once we know what's happening.

Getting exposure right

Here's a nice article on exposure. Click here to read it.

Member's picture

Here's a nice pic of the London Eye by Pat Kernick.

I like it and can only imagine that the print would be a stunner. I think that the inclusion of the ferry in the foreground balances the main subject nicely. Would a little more of the ferry have helped? I don't know; the pic is nice as it is.

Why don't you make a comment on the pic? You can do that by clicking the Comments link just below this.

September outing: reportback

We were relatively few on the trip to Alveston but a lot of fun was had by all. Click on the picture to view an enlargement.

By Allan Jackson

How's this for a lens?

DP Review has a story on a lens produced by Carl Zeiss which is world's largest. The Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* F4.0 lens has a focal length of 1700mm and rumour has it that it was ordered by a wildlife photography fanatic who had some oil wells in his backyard. Click here to read the story.

Photo composition

Check out this article in the Telegraph on photo composition. Click here to read.