This week we met via Zoom in order to review and comment upon members entries for a discussion evening based on the title Creative Photography. Our only brief for the evening was that we should use “any amount of post processing we choose”, and that no scoring of the entries would take place.
We had nine members who rose to that challenge, producing 24 images across a wide range of styles and approaches to the task set by our programme committee. The evening was chaired by Martin F who stepped in at very short notice when the original master of ceremonies was unable to officiate. Having seen the wide range of approaches taken by the members entering this session, I feel Martin deserves a special commendation for undertaking this particular duty. He even managed to avoid scoring of entries, despite obvious temptations.
This blog post will review only a random selection of these images for comment – the whole range can be viewed in the appropriate gallery on the club website.
The first entry was titled ‘What is it?’ by Alfred C. This writer felt he was seeing a 3D CAD engineering drawing produced using Autocad, where the draughtsman had gone off for his lunch part way through. Whilst this may be true, what Alfred had actually photographed was displayed on the side of a moored ship. None of the audience came close to answering the question asked in the title.
Alfred C also entered the image titled ‘I’m looking up not down’, using a curved spherical mirror surface installed in a public space. Another imaginative image from his submissions.
Brian C submitted a popular image titled ‘Flowers in a breeze’ , an example of ICM which drew a number of warm comments from the audience, even if some did want to take their scissors to the image.
Martin F submitted several images, including ‘Departure lounge’, a most liquid and very disorientating image from the Brighton seafront.
Martin also entered another image titled ‘Action men’ where a statue and man exercising show an amazing replications of body shape
Joe F entered three images of a ballerina performing in an almost unlit space, captured using a very slow shutter speed. The images show all the indications of a strobe light source, although none was apparent at the time. The light source was derived from spillage through an open doorway from an adjacent room. These pictures provoked a lot of discussion on the evening.
Neil G also entered three images, the most striking of which is reproduced below. ‘Warp speed’ is a vertiginous shot looking up through the steelwork of the Shard which has had an imported background introduced to add colour and drama. This image was also well received.
One of the more quirky images of the evening was entered by DJ, titled ‘Cone of Atlantic City’, which was generally well received by the members present.
DJ also submitted the image titled ‘Ventilation pipe, Industrial estate, Pennsylvania’. Martin F commented that this picture reminded him of the works of William Eggleston, and was the image he liked best from the evening.
David P again showed us two images exploring the boundaries of photography. The image below titled ‘Dark field illumination’ was not taken down a microscope as imagined, but was produced by the use of a bespoke brush tool carrying the image of a specialised plant leaf. Creative perfectly describes the build up of this image.
Phillip R introduced three images, including ‘Fluorescent egg (UV)’ below. This was taken under UV light against a black background, following a recent talk by David P on this specialised subject.
David S also submitted three images, two showing his wizardry using Photoshop, and the third using zoom motion blur during the exposure of a static subject, followed by sharpening of the central flowers. ‘Warping through colour space’ is reproduce below
Overall a very broad range of subjects, styles and presentations were seen during the evening, demonstrating what a wide range of images can be produced under the photography banner. These ideas will no doubt challenge all of us to broaden our horizons in the months ahead.