Last night Kevin Pigney delivered his talk on how he processes his wild life photographs. He went into some detail about his method of 'post processing', using Photoshop and Lightroom, (although Camera Raw has nearly identical controls). He demonstrated alternative methods of such subjects as sharpening and dealing with highlights and shadows - what would have been called 'dodging and burning' in the 'old days' of dark room processing. I'm sure we all learnt or were reminded of something. A talk that all levels of experience of photoshop will have gained something from. I have no experience of other software (Luminar, Affinity) and they weren't mentioned, but I hope users of these were able to get something useful out of the talk, I'm sure that they will as he explained what he was hoping to achieve.

He was using an older version of Lightroom and Photoshop and some of the controls may have moved or now be different, I have just received this from Peter E - many thanks Peter. Is your Lightroom Classic Develop Module suddenly missing its HSL Panel? Don't panic. HSL in all its glory has been nested in the new Color Mixer Panel under the “Mixer” tab.

In Camera Raw it is in the Colour Mixer tab (which is where it always was - I think?!)

I feel it's important to remember that software such as Photoshop is being improved and updated all the time, and other plug ins that Kevin didn't talk about(eg Topaz, NIC) have their place for some in post processing. There's always more than one way to achieve similar results in Photoshop! His edits were very subtle but did achieve the results he was looking for. I really look forward to receiving his notes, I will forward them to you when I receive them.

Peter T asked about the Christmas meal, and asked anyone who had any ideas to let him (or me!) of where we should go, Oake Manor was suggested as a possible.

Next week it's me and Martin (and possibly Huw) showing and talking about what has kept us busy - photographically - this year!!

It is also hand in day for the November competition, which is a print competition - Open and Themed - A Local (named)Urban Scene. Please look at the website for instructions on submitting and labelling prints, also for instructions about emailing the pdi versions of your images. These will be shown next week for easier viewing, but only the prints will be judged. The pdi's should also be submitted by next Wednesday.

Remember that the following week is the first of our Challenges, we have been 'tasked' to show and talk about 6 images on the theme of 'Inside Historical Buildings'.

Looking at the weather, today might be an ideal day to do some mounting of your images in readiness for next week!!