Take a look at the list and let Val, John or Virginia know what other skills, missing from the list, that you would like to learn.

•  Actions – creating and applying
• Adding Light to an image: e.g. Under birds wings.
• Batch processing
• Borders
• Burning
• Chanels
• Cloning
• Content Aware Scale
• Creating a watermark
• Cropping
• Cropping excercises
• Curves
• Darkening corners
• Darkening highlights
• Darkening water
• Dropping in a new sky
• High Dynamic Range
• Highlights in eyes
• Levels
• Meta information
• Multiplying layers
• Page Curls
• Photomerging
• Photoshop Workspace
• Recolouring
• Removing power lines
• Removing unwanted items from image
• Repairing skin
• Resizing for competitions
• Shaddows and highlights
• Sharpening and Unsharp mask
• Straighten skyline
• Straightening buildings
• Turing images to black and white
• Undersaturating e.g. Trees in Australia
• Vibrance

In 1942, the BBC introduced a radio programme called Desert Island Discs. The idea is that a famous person is asked to choose eight pieces of music they would take with them to a deserted island, and talk about what the tracks mean to them. At the end of each programme, the guest is sent into imaginary exile, along with their choice of a book, a luxury and one of their eight records. The show recently celebrated its 70th birthday.

And that got me thinking: photography has unlimited scope for acquiring new kit and at some point we hit the law of diminishing returns where the results hardly justify the extra expense. So, if you were to be cast away on some desert island, what photography kit would you choose? Or, in other words, what do you REALLY need in the way of gear? For the purposes of this little game I have only one concession and one rule. The concession is that the island has a working solar power supply. The rule is that if you have an SLR camera the body counts as one choice.

So here’s my personal choice with my reasons.

1. My DSLR – this allows me maximum creativity. My compact can do most of what my SLR can but my SLR has the edge in control and flexibility. It does mean though that I have to choose a lens which counts for my second choice.
2. My 50mm standard, fixed length lens – this is much sharper than my kit zoom lens and gives a very bright image thanks to its “fast” aperture. It has a nice perspective and the ability to blur the background that makes close ups seem to “pop out”. To get a zoom effect, I just have to move my feet. The lens is lightweight and simple to use.
3. A microfibre cloth to keep my lens clean. I have only one lens so this means I don’t have to remove it from the body so cleaning inside should not, in theory, need to be done.
4. My Gorillapod – this is a bendable tripod that can grip to any surface. It is light and easily carried and makes a good, stable platform to prevent camera shake.
5. My flashgun – my SLR can take an add-on flash unit with a “bounce” head which allows me to fill in subjects on a bright day and to bounce my flash using the built in card for a better, more diffuse light effect.
6. My Lowe waistpack that I can use to carry items 3, 4 and 5. It is easy to grab what I need and I am not fiddling round taking off a back pack and missing a shot.
7. My laptop – this contains my complete photo collection. Enough said.
8. Adobe Lightroom 3 – this piece of software helps me to catalogue over 10,000 images and to develop, improve or get creative with those images.

So there you have it; my personal list of essential camera gear for my desert island experience. Your list will probably be different but I hope it gives you something to ponder next time you go on a field trip.

See you around. Geoff

You may recall from my random series of ramblings about photo related matters that some months ago I wrote about food photography. I hope you have tried it and done so successfully.

Hands up how many of you have posted your food photos online? The reason I pose this question is that I recently came across a rather esoteric publication created by a digital marketing agency entitled “Online Food and Photo Sharing Trends” (yes, I know, I really should get a life) which claims that more than 80 BILLION photos of all kinds are uploaded every year to social media platforms alone. No wonder Kodak crashed and burned.

Anyway, it seems that food photos are increasing in popularity. I am sure this is not entirely due to web surfers reading A Wider Angle but you never know. Anyway, the report’s authors surveyed 420 online photos and their associated captions, keywords and hashtags. Now in the context of 80 billion online photos this is only a minuscule sample, however some of the results are quite interesting. Of the sample, 12% of images were taken as a standalone photographic exercise with similar proportions including photos relating to people and special occasions. But over 25% of images were taken purely for documentary reasons. Why should this be? I don’t know but maybe it mirrors the trend of Facebookers posting their latest status update about what they had for dinner that night and other such earth shattering trivia.

It doesn’t stop there as there is a new app (remember those) called Platter which will tag and share food images and the big one called Foodspotting which has had more than 1m food images uploaded to its site in the past two years. A prolific Flickr group is called I Ate This where more than 25,000 members have uploaded 470,000 images. It makes you wonder whether some people are in danger of losing their ability to simply enjoy a meal!

See you around, Geoff

A lone figure muffled against the elements staggers across a Hamilton car park into the teeth of a biting westerly wind. As he nears a dairy he notices a newspaper placard announcing “Severe Gales Set to Batter Waikato”. Congratulations Waikato Times, you’ve done it again. Another timely scoop. Nothing like being first with the news. Good job then that someone was more on the ball than our esteemed local rag in deciding to cancel the Miranda field trip. And that’s a pity because if you have never been to Miranda you should. It really is a magical place. I was there one glorious sunny evening last December and it was as far from a weather bombsite as you could imagine. I had the place to myself and a balmy breeze from the north kept the insects at bay. The sun glinted off the shell banks and there was much avian activity including the spectacular mass take off of godwits

I find photographing birds to be quite challenging and whilst I often bang on about the fact that it’s not about the camera, a decent long lens is a must if you want frame filling shots of small birds. My 300mm lens on my “cropped” DSLR gives me the equivalent of 450mm which I find more than adequate for my needs but small birds photographed at a distance are still a touch disappointing. Of course the long lens is all very well sitting on a tripod in the hide with birds that keep still but as soon as they start doing birdy things like flying it all starts to get a bit hard. Even with multipoint autofocus, burst mode and auto everything else you still have to spot the bird, aim/compose and fire away and hope it all works. Most of the time it does not. I can just about hand hold the 300mm lens for short periods.

I found that two things helped. First, watch the birds and you start to notice patterns of flying and landing which is an education in itself. That way you can predict to an extent what is going to happen. Second, play the numbers and take lots of shots. I mean LOTS of shots. Use burst mode if you have it. Miranda is not just about seabirds though. The best part of the evening came as I was leaving with the sight of a skylark ascending in full voice. I even managed a couple of passable shots of it although as mentioned above they are not exactly frame fillers. In the end though, it doesn’t matter as there are some things that a camera cannot fully capture however hard you try. Just being there was reward enough.

See you around, Geoff

Our next exhibition, call and response, curated by Kim Paton, will present works from emerging artists who must wrestle with the inherent challenges of the site, including the scale and natural beauty of the landscape. Kim has accepted proposals that demonstrate engagement with the physical and historical environment of the site as well as wider environmental issues. The exhibition will include various forms of work including sculpture, installation, ephemeral, performance and conceptual.

Geoff’s comments (Aperture – December 2011) about Photoshop, the media, and the photographer’s responsibility to his subject are worthy of more than superficial consideration.   Unfortunately he has fallen into the trap of using examples from the highly competitive world of commercial photo-journalism on the one hand and mixing them with a situation  that we commoners might experience on the other.    As we all know, they are worlds apart.

Geoff implies that the only use for Photoshop should be to correct any perceived defects in the original image.      So my first questions are; who decides what defects are?   Who decides what is enhancement?   And the biggie, who decides what is acceptable in an increasingly cosmopolitan world?

Grazia is not a UK magazine.   It is an Italian magazine with an English edition, a subtle but significant difference.  The offending picture was not there as a true and correct record of the event.  The image fooled no-one.  As soon as it was published it was picked up as a fake.    It was there to sell magazines – pure and simple, and boy, it sure did that.    It is understandable that the Brits might get up tight about the PSing of their current idol, their fairytale princess.   Of course somebody complained to the Press Complaints Commission.   That’s what the PCC is for.   The big story would have been if nobody had complained.    However the Italian public were not in the least put out and saw it all as a storm in a tea cup.

So, more questions.   Why do so many people still assume that what they see must be true?    And (from a man’s point of view) what idiot believes what they see in a fashion magazine?

I have thought long and hard about Geoff’s suggestion that we take pictures of people in order that somebody, sometime, will get the warm fuzzies.   As a general rule, I take photos of people in order to show as much as I am able of their character and possibly something of the environment that goes towards that character.   If subjects hate seeing themselves in photos then that’s their problem.    Their hatred will always show through and there is nothing any photographer can do about it.   Personally, if anybody intimates to me in any manner at all that they do not want to be photographed then I immediately make it equally clear that I will respect their wishes.   As for pimples, teeth whitening, eye sparkling and wrinkle softening, let’s not beat about the bush it – it’s dishonest in exactly the same way that the Grazia image was dishonest.   You do it.   I do it.   Why not Grazia?

It is not a simple case of trying to put one over the subject.   Is the subject trying to put one over you, the photographer?   Or, what might be even worse, put one over the viewer with your collusion.

Of course we must never forget that one man’s line in the sand may be another man’s ripple on the beach.   But we won’t know which it is until we wade in to see.

Here we go again. If it’s February it must be the start of a new season of Society activities and a gentle reminder from Helen that I needed to compose this piece.

I have to confess that my off-season photographic activities have been very limited.  One of the perils of doing and photographing a sport is that I want to do both at the same time which, until science comes up with a way of cloning me, is of course impossible.  Not wanting to let the side down in races later this year means more saddle time and less shutter time.

I have not been entirely idle with the camera though and just as with sport, in photography practice makes perfect.  Of course for anyone with a true passion for something, perfection is never attained and the journey is what counts.  Lots of instances recently of “Now what does this button do?” “How do I…….?” and the less said about my reaction times the better.

The big photo story in recent weeks has been Kodak’s financial problems and subsequent filing for bankruptcy protection.  I don’t pretend to know the full story but it seems Kodak were either unable or unwilling to adapt to the digital era.  They may have pioneered the digital camera and it might reasonably be asked why they didn’t capitalise on it. Hindsight is 20/20 of course and anyway Kodak made lots of money selling film and paper at huge margins.  It would have been a brave CEO to take this innovative technology forward and effectively cannibalise the company’s core business.  The horns of a dilemma indeed and sadly for Kodak the moment, so to speak, passed.

I no longer use film and I don’t really do nostalgia.  However I grew up with film and learnt photography through that medium.  Brands like Agfa and Ilford just didn’t have the Kodak cachet.  OK I confess to occasional dalliances with Fuji Velvia but I could never quite warm to those eye popping greens.  How exciting it was to send your slide film away in those little yellow envelopes and wait eagerly for the cool plastic yellow box to arrive.  It was almost like Christmas.  There was that frisson of fear that the killer image you took in some obscure corner of Europe might turn out to be a dud.  And EVERYTHING was processed, warts and all.  Many slides ended up in drawers and projector boxes, some found their way into albums.  But most of all they were there, ready for a family evening with projector and screen.

See you around, Geoff

c/o ROGER BROWNSEY, HONPSNZ , FPSNZ.
8Benmohr Pl. TOKOROA 3420

Advance advice of a print exhibition:

OUR NEW ZEALAND THROUGH THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY

To be displayed in TOKOROA 12-18 OCTOBER 2012

Much has changed in photography over the past decade, we now make our photographs with ‘pixels’ rather than film & silver, thus our Camera Club has decided to change the way we conduct an exhibition of our photographic prints.

The South Waikato Camera Club, with your help, invite your Members to be part of this Exhibition with differences, it will be a simple and inexpensive way for your Members to participate and entry is restricted to Members of Camera Clubs within the Central North Island. The Exhibition will be made up of 60-65 of your prints selected through a process of first viewing Digital Files of your entry then advising you which files to print for hanging in the Exhibition. read more about new print photo competiton Tokoroa

If you are a digital photographer you probably use Photoshop or something similar.  Contrast, cropping, sharpening and colour balance are standard practice.  You may even remove dust specks.  How about the portrait where you remove a blemish from the person’s face?  Not unusual.  You can easily zap zits, whiten teeth, wipe out wrinkles, remove fat, ditch scars, and well, just about anything.  The ability to misrepresent yourself and others in photos is a real possibility.

So where do you draw the line, so to speak?  In August this year, Grazia, a UK magazine, ran a story on the Royal Wedding.  They wanted a solo cover picture of the Duchess of Cambridge coming out of Westminster Abbey.  Trouble was the only photos they had also featured the Duke.  But of course they did.  The photo editors came up with a cunning plan. Airbrush the Duke out.  So far so good.  Maybe.  Ah, but what about the fact that they were arm in arm and the Duchess’ right arm, entwined in the Duke’s left, was still sticking out at an unnatural angle. No problem, let’s copy the left arm, flip it over and paste it on the right hand side and balance everything up. Brilliant.  Job well done.  Bonuses all round.

Not so fast said the Press Complaints Commission in response to a complaint.  A complaint?  About the British press?  How unusual.  Anyway, the PCC found that the cunning folks at Grazia had made the Duchess look not just slim round the waist but impossibly so.  This would give a false impression of her vital statistics which could easily mislead their many readers into believing that if only they went on diet X they too could aspire to meet an heir to the British Throne, fall in love and marry him in a ceremony which would be watched by millions across the world and then walk out onto the Abbey steps and look just like her.

So what, you may ask, has this to do with photography at the level of we commoners?

Well, we take pictures of people for people so that over the years they and we can look at them and think back to that time fondly.  Many people hate seeing themselves in photos, and anything we can do to make that process a little easier is worth it.  Some people are self conscious of their crow’s feet.  Others their eye bags.  Some have large scars that they would rather not print onto 11×14 paper.  They see these things as defects, but they are what makes that person unique.  So what do you do?  Do you retouch defects out completely?

A good rule of thumb is to remove any temporary blemishes such as pimples since they don’t define the person.  Then maybe soften other defects to make them less obvious.  Wrinkles stay put, but they’re softer and less noticeable.  Eye bags: softer.  Teeth a bit whiter.  Sparkle in the eye.  Above all respect and don’t try to put one over on the subject, you’ll not get away with it.

See you next year.

Geoff

Our lives are dictated by it. From getting up to going to bed, travelling, going to work, fixing appointments and watching sports events with its halves, quarters and clocks (basketball has two of them for goodness sake!) and race placings measured down to hundredths of a second, it seems we are constantly living with one eye on the clock.

So it would be nice once in a while to get your own back. Beat the system. Show them who’s boss. Become a Time Lord in fact. In photography, you can do just that by using your shutter to freeze or str…….etttt…….chhhh time.

One of the fundamental tools that a photographer has is the ability to record time. Modern cameras have the technology to record smaller and smaller time intervals. It is quite feasible that your camera could be capable of recording 1/4000^th second or less and, with a strobe light, even smaller segments of time can be recorded.

This capability allows us to freeze motion. We can also capture the progression of time by photographing a subject in quick succession using burst mode with the camera to produce a series of images showing, say, the effort of a runner crossing the finishing line. A sense of motion and passing time can be presented in many interesting ways.

By slowing down the shutter speed, any moving object can be blurred. This can be a bad thing which we might try to avoid but it also has the effect of establishing a sense of motion (and hence the stretching of time) in the photograph.
Moving the camera while shooting is also something we avoid. But moving the camera while focusing on a moving object, (panning) will also generate a sense of motion and time.

It’s also possible, if you didn’t capture it in the camera, to generate a sense of time and motion in your photos by using post processing techniques such as motion blur and multiple layering. The ultimate weapon in the battle against the clock is of course the ability of our camera to make time stand still completely and forever by recording that special time or place we want to remember. That is surely the beauty of photography.

See you around. Geoff