Author: photomike

Despite our colorful world and color-photography, we all have seen the stunning effect a good black & white picture has. One of our many talented members will inspire us to give B&W a try (again).

Gilles Bisson presents

Black & White Photography

On his website,  Gilles says, ”I am a retired Chartered Accountant and moved to Belleville from Kapuskasing in the summer of 2010. I had dabbled in photography for a few years but never really got into it until retirement. With a little more time on my hands, I decided to take a few photography courses and finally started to learn how to use my camera equipment. Learning photography combined with my love of nature and kayaking is all I needed to develop a great hobby.

I enjoy nature photography, and the surrounding conservation areas/provincial parks provide me with an incredible area to explore.

I use a canon T3i and a 6D with canons EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 L and EF 24-105mm f4L lenses. Carting all this stuff around in a kayak can sometimes be a bit of a challenge but so far I have managed to remain right side up and dry.

Now that I have discovered the amazing variety of birds that reside in and migrate through the area, I am eager to learn more about birding. It’s proving to be a great supplement to my photography and kayaking.

In line with Gilles’ presentation, the January photo display theme is:   Black & White

The theme in February is: Shadows

Tim Whitehouse welcomed thirty-six members and one guest to today’s meeting. He announced the new policy that a meeting fee of $5.00 for guest members would be in effect for future meetings.

Mike Gaudaur gave an update on the website:

• If you subscribe to the website, you’ll receive an email notification when new material is posted.
• You can upload your theme pictures and when prompted for the password, use “lighthouse”: all lower case and without the quotes. This is for member use only, so please don’t share.
• You may request an individual gallery to be created. Use the comments section to request this. Please, this is a club related site/gallery, so any personal business references should not be posted here.
• Images for uploading should be sized to a width of 800 pixels.

Tony Crocker introduced our guest lecturer, Terry Carpenter, who gave a very informative presentation on “Creating a Basic Slide Show. “He should have added with pizazz. Terry included pearls of wisdom on telling a story, organizing the slides to tell that story, visual timing of the slides, setting them to appropriate music, and creating executable files. It looks like the old days of “lets all sit behind the Kodak, and watch hundreds of carousal pictures are over.” Terry’s software of choice is Pro-Show Gold, which is feature packed, intuitive, and easy to use. It is available for $69.95 but you can download a free trial before making a purchase decision. Terry concluded his presentation with a ten-minute slide show called “Travels Through Algonquin”, which incorporated all the points he presented.

Note: The Pro-Show Gold is a Windows based program. Another package available is “Pictures to EXE” Google that and you’ll be taken to the website. This is also a Windows platform. For Mac users, try “Fotomagico 5” from Boinx Software. It’s less feature packed than ProShow, but it will do the trick for the Mac family.

Twenty-nine photos were on display, of which 15 were for the “Outside the Box” theme, 3 for critique, 4 from the Alpaca farm field trip, and 7 general shots. Terry led the critique of some amazing photographs which clearly took members outside the box of traditional photography: a hood ornament digitally twisted turned and blended into an abstract, a simple drill bit transformed into a work of art through light experimentation, a computer generated multi coloured graphic box (no camera involved), and Tim’s stacked chairs taken with a digital pin hole camera (no lens, just a camera body cap with a hole drilled through it. 

Sorry… I forgot to record the 50/50 winner and will include it in the next wrap-up. 

The theme for January is “Black and White.”