Cairns Photographic Society Inc Newsletter, September 2018 Hello CPS members and friends, Your new committee has now met on a couple of occasions and some significant changes to the functions of the Club have been flagged for future action. A sub-committee met several weeks ago to review all of the club’s operational procedures and a special thank you must be offered to Rob Harris for his help and guidance. A number of topics were identified and these are briefly outlined, below. There will be more on these matters in coming months but, in the meantime, if anyone has a comment, complaint or bright idea on any of these topics please send me an email.

Future Directions Here are the topics discussed and a brief summary of the discussion:

The Club’s Demographic and overall direction.

o The older demographic is typical of community clubs and reflects the appeal

to those who have the spare time and money to indulge their hobby,

o Any moves to change the direction of the club must not neglect the views of

existing, long-term members,

o Membership has varied from a low of about 15 in the 1990s to a high of 100

in the mid 2000s. This higher figure reflects introduction of cheap digital

cameras at that time. Current membership is stable at about 50.

Structure of Meetings

o Meetings too structured.

o Need for more informality and social interaction,

Social Secretary

o One member of the committee to be nominated Social Secretary with duties

including::

Arrange outing meal venues,

Fundraisers (Bunnings, etc.),

Occasional restaurant get-togethers, BBQ’s etc,

Look after new members and guests,

Newsletter

o One member of the committee be nominated to produce the monthly

newsletter:

Advertise events,

More topics of general photographic interest,

More member content – member profile?

Outing trip report.

Competition Secretary

o Investigate a digital competition entry system to reduce the burden on the

Competition Secretary,.

o Only images judged HC, Merit and Honours to be shown in the judging

slideshow,

o All competition entries to be uploaded as a slideshow to the CPS website,

Sponsorship

o Investigate sponsorship possibilities for prizes. Suggestions:

Photographic destinations – resorts,

Reef trips,

Photo tours, etc.

Digital presence – facebook/Webpage/Instagram

o Examine how our digital presence can best serve our members and

encourage people to join and participate.

Meetings The committee has decided that future general meetings will remain at the Stratford Library meeting room. Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday 20th September at 7:00pm and we will be trialling some of the suggested meeting changes which are summarised above. In particular, the formal part of the meeting will not start until 7:45 to give members a chance to have a coffee and socialise beforehand. Alex Pirez will arrange for a delivery of pizzas and other food items so don’t fill up on a big dinner beforehand. During this time, have discussions about the matters mentioned above and if you have any suggestions make sure you let a committee member know. This will be an important meeting as the winners of the “Image of the Year” will be announced and awarded their prizes. Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend this meeting but I am quite confident that Vice- President Eden will handle it with his usual aplomb.

Outings September Note that the September outing has been changed and will now be held at Copperlode Dam. Members should bring a picnic lunch as the café is no longer in operation. There are a number of gas barbeques and a large grassy picnic area as the dam site. You can arrive at any time from 8:00am onwards for lunch at 12:30pm.

October We have received an invitation from the Douglas Photographic Society to have a joint outing with them to Mossman Gorge. This has been pencilled in for October (28th) but we still need to confirm with the DPS.

November Our frequently cancelled Kuranda outing has now been re-scheduled for November. Details will be advised closer to the date. December Christmas party. The venue will be The Balaclava Hotel, 423 Mulgrave Rd, Earlville QLD. Details will be given in the next newsletter. January Informal outing – Esplanade Dawn Shoot, followed by breakfast at the RSL Club.

Recap, August Outing & PSQ Mini Conference – Genanzzano Retreat, Lake Tinaroo It was a great weekend at Genazzano’s Retreat, with lots of informative discussion and opportunities for photos. It was good to meet senior PSQ members, John Blessas (Judge’s Exexutive Liaison) and Sue Gordon (President) as well as photographers from all over the state and to hear the stories of their photographic experiences. The general feedback that I have received is we need more hands-on photography and less talk, so we should keep this in mind for the next regional mini-conference. Although this was a PSQ event, the organisational work was done, in the main, by Alex Pirez, Eden Gray-Spence and Corinne Bramwell. I must give particular praise to Corinne who worked above and beyond the call of duty to make the weekend a success. Many members have posted their images to the CPS facebook Group Page so please take the opportunity to have a look at them. A slideshow of selected images Genazzano will be shown at the next meeting.

Lake Tinaroo at Genazzano Retreat

Tutorials Our next tutorial to be held at Cominos House next Thursday at 7pm (13th Sept). It will be on Depth of Field (DOF). We will break into two or more groups – beginners and intermediate with a tutor/facilitator assigned to each group so no one gets left behind as the instruction proceeds. The tutors will be setting up a variety of props at various distances so you can practice different DOF settings and check the results as the lesson proceeds. There will be help given with a DOF calculator so you can check the DOF for your individual camera and lens before exposure. This will be a two-part tutorial. On the night you will photograph a number of objects using different DOF settings and in the next tutorial we will go through the Photoshop method to align and combine all your images into a single picture, tack sharp from front to back. You will need your camera, tripod, shutter release, if you have one, lens with widest aperture and a tape measure.

Sister Cities’ Exhibition – Riga, Latvia This International Sister Cities Exhibition has now opened in Riga and our club was represented by Tim and Jenny Warnock. All photos from Cairns were by club members and thanks must go to those who made the effort to shoot the Song and Dance theme. We have posted a number of images from the opening night on our facebook group page but for those who do not have access to facebook here are a few more. As you can see, it was a pretty big deal, so congratulations and thanks to our photographers.

The Cultural Palace, Riga

The Cairns Exhibition Room

The Main Exhibition Room

The Banner – Note Jackie Hammer’s Image

Some Software Tips

As many of you may know by now, I am a bit of a software nerd and like to keep up with the latest trends. I have tried various post-processing software but keep coming back to Photoshop and Lightroom, simply because they are the best. Over the past few weeks I have been tinkering with some features of both PS and LR that may be of general interest:

Lightroom At our last meeting Alex showed a video on a new Lightroom feature, the Range Mask. It was a bit hard to follow the presentation but it was obvious this was something really useful. Here it is, under the Adjustment Brush.

If you are interested in making selective adjustments to your image, this is the tool to use. Check out some of the uTube tutorials. It is a really powerful and accurate selection tool and used properly is much easier than many of the complex, high-end Photoshop selection methods. It even allows easy luminosity masking. Photoshop If you are like me, you learn some really interesting Photoshop technique, apply it to an image with great results but six months later when you try to do it again you have forgotten precisely how it was done. Well, you are not alone. Apparently Photoshop experts have exactly the same problem. But fortunately for us there are some experts out there who have created “Panels” for Photoshop that reduce some of the more complex procedures to a simple button pushing operation. Here is one I am working on, at present. It is called Raya Pro and is by a professional photographer called Jimmy McIntyre.

There are six main panels, InstaMask, Quick Blending, Dodge and Burn, Precision Masks, Filters and Actions and Finish. There is a bit of learning involved but nothing too arduous and Jimmy has a number of helpful videos. Well worth a look if you want to take your photos up to the next stage in post-processing.

Grant Phillips President, Cairns Photographic Society