Archive for March, 2011


The Bang Bang Club

A new film coming up a bit later this year… Its a drama based on the true-life experiences of four combat photographers capturing the final days of apartheid in South Africa. The trailer looks pretty good… I looked it up and it opens in Nu Metro on the 5th of August…

UFRaw

To follow up on last weeks Gimp post, here’s one more download before we got going… This is Raw processing plugin much like Camera Raw in Photoshop… Its called UFRaw…

You can read about it here, and download the windows installer from here. (If you think you’ll find this Gimp help useful, please leave a comment so I know its not a waste of time. Otherwise we can focus on Photoshop resources… )
For those who are more interested in Photoshop, here’s a few cool tutorials…

Show me the Light

Another 30 similar light tutorials can be found here

Another 20 Amazing Painting tutorials for the more creative amongst us…

Lastly check out these How To Geek Links:

Came across a pretty cool website this week… Its called MakeUseOf. Its basically a bit of a geeky website with all sort of resources. For instance, every week they release a pdf guide on a range of different topics. These are all for free. All you have to do is go to their facebook page, and ‘like’ it. This will allow you to download their guides.

There’s a few that relate to us: “The Essential guide to Digital Photography” and “An idiot’s guide to Photoshop” (part 1 & 2). Lot of other topics covered in their guides.

The two Photoshop one’s are pretty good. They have stuff on resizing, cropping, saving for the web, sharpening, making images black and white and lots more stuff…

PetaPixel had a post where a user (Paul Little) used HDR software to create what he calls “HDR Mixes”. Normally when you use HDR software you will use a couple of photos with different exposures. In this case they use totally different photos and merge them together using the HDR process to create some interesting results as you can see above. Give it a try to create some contemporary entries?? (BTW, PetaPixel has really good videos every day.)

Lastly, every month judges complain about images that could use some editing (levels, etc, etc.) . Processing photos on a computer is really not an option but a necessity. If you don’t have Photoshop, I would highly recommend investing in something like Photoshop Elements. Photoshop Elements basically has all the Photoshop functions that pertain to editing photos and is under R1000 from places like Incredible Connection.

There are free options available. The best one I know about is Gimp. Over the next couple of weeks I would like to cover some common and useful techniques for photo editing using Gimp. For today you can Download Gimp (for windows) or the Mac Version and have a look through some of their documentation and tutorials. If you need any help getting it installed then leave a comment and I’ll try help you…

That’s it for this week… See you at the Rally if you there!

Hi there Togs!

An outing is being planning to Coedmore Castle on Saturday 2nd April 2011 at 14H00. Jeffrey needs to finalise arrangements with the management of the castle and we need you to R.S.V.P. should you wish to participate in this outing. This is a paid-for outing and costs R45.00 per person and includes a tour of the castle and tea with scones. We need at least 10 members to secure the group booking.

More information about CoedMore Castle can be found here.

Should you be interested in participating, please fill in your details below. (Remember, the outings are reserved for WCC members)

Coedmore Castle, Yes!
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Venue directions and final arrangements will be posted within the week.

Click!
Chas.

For those motor-sport enthusiasts out there, don’t forget to diarise the “Total Tour Natal Rally” which takes place on the the South Coast this coming weekend 25 & 26 March 2011 (note, that is a Friday and Saturday).

The official website is http://www.totalmotorsport.co.za. Refer to the downloadable Spectator Guide (5MB PDF doc) for more information. The safety precautions and rules for spectator access areas are important, please refer to and adhere to the recommendations in the guide for your safety.

Maps for Day 1 and 2 are included below.

Regards,
Jeffrey.

AHOY MATIES! AHOY!

A huge thank to Lucy who has managed to organise access to a number of areas associated with The Royal Natal Yacht Club, Point Yacht Club and The Durban Marina. Lucy, you’re a star!

Details of the accessible areas and a few mandatory regulations will be announced tomorrow morning at the rendezvous point. Meet at first parking lot on the left, just past the traffic circle at the yacht club entrance. See the map below.

Refreshments and breakfast available for purchase at the RNYC afterwards.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there early, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Remember 05H15 for 05H30.

Anchors,away!
Chas.


What : Sunrise over the yacht mole in front of the RNYC.

Where : Royal Natal Yacht Club.

When : Saturday 19th March 2011

Time : 05H15 for 05H30 (Yes, that is early, but it is all about sunrise)

Rendezvous point : Car park in front of the restaurant –  working on getting access into the RNYC  :-)

<Click image to enlarge>

Contact kierran.allen@westvillecameraclub.co.za or jeffrey.govender@westvillecameraclub.co.za for further details.

Please note, that the outings are reserved for WCC members.

We’ve all been bombarded by news, videos and images of the disaster in Japan. Destruction that is hard to believe. Through all these images, I’m reminded of the great power that a photograph has to tell a story. In a fraction of a second, a moment is captured that will last forever. These are really touching images….

(phots from:  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/)

View the rest of these images here and here
Lets spare a thought and a prayer for the people who’s lives have been lost, changed and forever touched in this tragedy…

Tutorials

Added a tutorials page for guides, presentations and workshops by members. First entries in this new page contain the presentation documentation from Carl and Chas’ presentations on Tuesday 8 March 2011 covering Landscape photography with luminosity adjustments and Time-lapse photography.

For those members who could not make it to the workshop, here is the time lapse sequence which was presented by Chas.

Lost in time

We aim to increase the level of expertise in the club through presentations and workshops and are looking for presenters and interesting topics for future workshop evenings. Send us an e-mail if you have something to showcase or workshop – It’s all about having fun.

Click!
Chas.

The March issue of SNAP has been uploaded for you to download and read.

Herewith another guide on the monthly submission of images via the website for the judging evening.

You do not need to log on to the web site in order to submit images, If we start experiencing problems or abuse in this regard, then we will implement a logon policy. But right now, it is not required.

Navigate to the Image Submission page and choose submit images – the links are highlighted in the image below. First click on the “Submit” hyperlink in the top menu of any page. On the Submission page click on the link to submit the images.

or directly via the link at the bottom of the page.

It is best to completely fill in the Submission form and then click on the submit button just once, rather than submit each image separately.

Assuming that you will submit at least one image, the mandatory information you need to provide is therefore grouped with image 1. Images 2 through 4 are optional.

Starting at the top of the form; the mandatory info and image 1 information is filled in first, do not click on the submit button just yet if you have more than one image to submit.

The topic for the current month’s Set Subject is listed in the bar at the top of the form. You do not need to provide these details during the submission, it will automatically be added to the SS filename.

If you have accidentally skipped any of the mandatory fields, you will receive a warning when the Submit button is eventually clicked and the missing field will be highlighted for you to fill in.

For more than 1 image fill in the remaining details for each of the image groups. A group consists of the image descriptive name, the category and the location of the image file on your computer hard drive.

Only once you have filled in all the information for the images you wish to submit, then click on the Submit button. Everything will be uploaded to the website at this point.

Do not navigate away from the page until you see the “Successful” upload message which will be displayed at the top and bottom of this page upon completion.

This is the same location where any error messages would be displayed in the event of a problem.

Lastly, an -email messages will be sent to the e-mail address you provided in the form.

WCC image submission and judging evening takes place on the 3rd Wednesday of the month. Digital submissions online if possible, else use the manual forms.