Walsall wood camera club on the move.

I attended this weeks camera club, not knowing what was on offer for the night.
It turned out to be an interesting night, with a show from one of the members and a show of hands from the members.

Once everyone had settled into their seats, John Smith addressed his audience  John is the chairman of the club and a very friendly and welcoming fellow.
I knew there had been an emergency meeting in the week as i was at a committee members house having a lesson in framing.
It turns out that the meeting was to look for or at a new venue for the weekly meetings. John explained to his audience that the old Brownhills boys school (the Anex to me), had some very good facilities and were courting him to take the club there.

I must admit that the church hall that they use is very small and the parking is disastrous  Often the church will have events on the same night as the club, which causes visitors to park way away from the hall. The hall itself is not quite big enough for the amount of members they have. It all adds up to make sense for a move to a new venue.

The show of hands was almost unanimous for the move. It was stated that the subs/fee's would have to go up, and this was not because of the cost of the new hall, they would go up anyway.
From a new members point of view, the subs are very cheap indeed. i paid £5 to get my membership card and £1 per week subs. For that i get a cup of tea and a biscuit, which is bloody good value i think.
I would at least think putting the subs up to £1.50 would be the least they should do.

Now onto the show, which one of the senior and very skillful members put on with his wife.
One of his images in particular was a fantastically good shot in my opinion.. It was a black and white shot of a tattoo'ed gypsy, taken at a horse fair.
I had a chat with the presenter about HDR (high dynamic range) photography. He shoots almost all of his images in RAW. Most cameras convert photos into jpegs as soon as you take your shot. they do this to compress the image size and save space on your storage. Where a jpeg will lose the information captured in dark areas (i.e in the back of a dark shadow) RAW will keep that information to allow you to try to enhance it. I have now decided to give RAW a go and see if it improves my shots. We got into talking about HDR photos which really float my boat. The quality of HDR images is easy to see. In essence you take three photos of a subject without moving the camera if possible. Your first photo should be under exposed and your second over exposed, the third should be correctly exposed. One photo will show the images in its normal and acceptable light. The second will be dark and highlight the features in the very bright parts of the image. The third will be too light and show details of the shaded dark areas of the image. What you do then is in simple terms merge all of the images so that your dark areas have definition, the light areas have detail and your base shot fills out the rest. It works, but it does take some mastering. i tried a quick experiment at work today as i drove to my office. I wound the window down in my car and took three snaps of some random trees.

HDR attempt

 none HDR photo.

On the face of it there is not much difference in the images. I think the top image is slightly deeper than the second image, but that may be my imagination. I will do some more HDR photos soon and get them put on the blog.

I am off on a metal detecting dig on Sunday which may offer some opportunities for good Photos.

Happy snapping.

Walsall wood camera club, competition night.

My third week at the wwcc was to be my first viewing of a competition.
I had entered a photo of a horse which i had snapped while walking along the canal at Wychnor.
My goal was to listen to constructive criticism of my snap. i was entered into the novice section and to be honest there were some cracking images in the section. I think there were 16 entries with my own one. Some i could see were better than mine and some which i thought mine would match up to. the judge who was a very pleasant type said some nice things about my snap, but i didn't make the top 5.

The learning curve is beginning to develop, with everything the members tell me sinking in to my grey matter.
One of the members said it's not very often you win with Animal pictures. The judge himself said he does not like judging child photos, as criticism often gets taken the wrong way by relatives. I was also told that sports photos don't always go down well, however one actually won, it was a picture of speedway.

Unfortunately i can't show the winning images as i don't have permission, but as i get more involved i would hope to get permission.

I particularly enjoy the monochrome section, as i think that being an expert in Photoshop does not really aid you.

I now have a goal that by this time next year i will find an image that will take a prize, watch this space.

The Ogley dirt farmer.: Clodhoppers dig Chaddesley Corbett dig.

The Ogley dirt farmer.: Clodhoppers dig Chaddesley Corbett dig.

Clodhoppers dig Chaddesley Corbett dig.

I found myself looking out of the window this morning wandering if the rain would ever stop. Its was 5am and the rain was bouncing off the window. I was due to be in Worcestershire for 8am, for the Clodhoppers Chadeseley Corbett open dig.

The club had put the dig on to raise funds for some specialist equipment at Birmingham Hospital. The farmer had already had us on a couple of fields earlier in the month for a charity dig.
The new fields for today looked very promising as they bordered a very old moated house. Of course once the time came, that would be the field i headed for.

Anyway, by 7am the rain had stopped and i loaded up the car. I had not gone 5 miles when i realised i had left my shovels at the back of the car and not in the boot! So back home i went and loaded up, again.

I arrived on site at about 8.05, and there were plenty already there. I made my acquaintances and paid my due's. Its always good to have a natter with the guys and gals before we head off and this i did for a good 40 minutes.

The walk to the fields was a good 15 minutes, along a main road then up a lane. I led the way, although i was unsure where i was going. I did managed to navigate my way to the first field which bordered the moated house. I decided at that point to move on to the field adjacent to the church first. I had about an hour and a half on here with a 2p and a watch winder being my only real interesting finds.

I then made my way to the field i had planned to go to first. When i got to the entrance i looked up at the old house and thought that there must be finds here. One of the guys said that he thought the fields had been dug before, a lot. He said he remembers Kidderminster club going on there when he was younger. This proved to be probably true as there were finds on their but not as many as you would expect.

I heard through the grapevine that their had been a Silver Roman and a Charles 1 had been found by one of the more prolific of the members, Gregor. He has good technique and a good temperament  as well as being at peace with his machine.

I had a spindle whorl out within half an hour, and then a Worcestershire cap badge after about 1 hour. I decided to turn the sensitivity down to an extremely low setting after a conversation with one of the other detectorists. This payed off as i had a lovely hammered of David (Scottland), which is damaged but well
defined.

Sadly i had to leave the dig early as i had a family event to attend, i had however heard that there may have been up to 5 hammies found so far.

A lovely day with great friends again, cant wait until the next dig.

Walsall wood camera club, my second visit.

This was my second visit to the club which meets each Tuesday in the hall behind St Johns church Walsall wood.
On this occasion, one of the local rival clubs (Aldridge) turned up to put on a prints and digital show for us.
I must start off by saying it was a fantastic turn out again, i never in my wildest dreams thought that a camera club could have so many active members.
One of the gentlemen from Aldridge, gave a brief description of what we were about to see.
The first display was by a gentleman who had a fantastic selection of shots from the Lake district. There were plenty of water shots which i particularly like, as he managed to capture very still waters and great reflections.
We then had a display of mixed monochrome and colour images. This particular selection had a couple of portraits in it. one of the portraits was of a Greek fella that the gentleman had spotted in a cafe while on holiday. This particular image was really eye catching for me and has enthused me to capture as many images of characters as i can.

Here is an image i took a year or so ago with a compact camera. This guy rocked up on a pier in Greece with his fishing rod and a stool. He pitched up next to me wearing wellies and what i imagined was a old German world war 2 helmet. He kept the helmet on the whole time to keep the sun off his head (i would imagine) as it was 40 degrees.

my favorite people shot so far.

Please feel free to criticise my images. I have not photo shopped this image, but what could photo shop actually do for this image?

The next set of prints came from some one who used the Clayhanger wet lands a lot. i was amazed at how he had managed to make some rather mundane spots, look fantastic on his prints. May be its the fact that i go there a la lot that i don't consider the area worthy of a good photo (lesson learnt). Next time i am over that area i will be taking my camera. That set of prints has given me much enthusiasm to capture more of the places i often go and don't appreciate.

It was time then for a cup of tea and a chat with some of the members. I don't have trouble chatting to be honest. A couple of the senior members made a point of coming over for a chat. I signed up for a lesson on framing (how to) which is something i need to learn fairly quickly. I had brought a photo with me which i had framed, my idea was to get an opinion of what i had done rite or wrong in this effort. I ended up putting it into the competition for next week. I know it won't win any prizes, but the criticism will be constructive and help me in producing a better shot in the future.

The photo i entered into the competition (the Oss)

We then moved into a digital display which was very interesting. Some of the shows were of mundane subjects, and others of specific targets. One of which was a dance group, definitely not mundane. These photos had some great shots in which seemed to utilize lots of black and white clothing and background, mostly black The little amount of colour on shots made the photos very interesting to me. I suppose if you get a subject so full of energy you are going to have that come out in your images, which these surely did.

There were a couple of the shows presented to music. These pricked my interest in setting some of my snaps to sound. Watch this space!

All in all it was a very informative night, and i look forward to my next visit.

Please leave comments on this blog, i do like to be interactive.

god bless ya.

Walsall Wood camera club, my first visit.

I decided to visit my local camera club yesterday. The decision came about as i have decided to take some expert advice on board and improve my photos.
The meeting was held in a church hall at the rear of St Johns church. It was a huge turn out as it happens, about 45 members. This may have been due to a visit from a prominent photographer from Birmingham.
A slide show was provided of photos from said photographer, with commentary throughout.
There were some interesting photos , and plenty of humor thrown in.

I think i picked up a few tips, especially on Photoing moving subjects. It's interesting to hear what he liked to see in a photograph, as he is a prominent competition judge by all accounts.

I think i will enjoy my involvement in this club, and can't wait to get competitive. I will be in as a beginner  to which i don't think there are many others in the club. Still, it makes life easier for me.

watch this space.

My two pleasures in life, Photography and metal detecting.

I have decided to dedicate my blog to just two subject  from here on in.

1. Metal detecting, which i love taking part in and have done so for many years.
2. Photography, again something i have played with all of my adult life.

I have to say that as a metal detectorist i am not that bad at it. That is i have a half decent knowledge of the hobby and have some good results when out.

On the other hand my Photography has always been hit and miss. I think i need some direction and presume i can only get this by joining a club. I have therefore researched local clubs to Brownhills and come up with Walsall wood club which i will visit on Tuesday.

Today i took some snaps at Lake Vernwy after spending the night there. It was 6.30 am and i tried some low light shots, which i didn't cover myself in glory with.

looking across the lake at 6.30am

Daylight view across the lake.

I met a chap on the top of the dam this morning who was a member of the Oswestry photography club. He too was up early trying to capture some good images.
I will be having a new camera for Christmas, a Nikon D7000. This is a high end of the beginners range of  cameras. i hope it helps me improve my ability,  i do know that hard work from myself is the key to me taking better photos.

Watch this space.