Last night’s Zoom meeting featured Simon Caplan talking to us on the ‘Extraordinary Ordinary’, how he finds and captures found still life and abstract images, and illustrated his talk with some really great pictures. His photographs, largely taken in the most run of the mill surroundings, were often of things many of us would have taken for granted. For this reason Simon’s opening remarks were about using our eyes and finding the things that were not immediately obvious.
He broke his talk down into ‘chapters’ addressing the different areas where images could be found, showing us images from Buildings, Architecture and Public Art; On the Street; Museums and Exhibitions and around the home in the first half of his presentation.
After a short break he took us quickly through a few examples of some of the other images he takes – Landscapes, environmental portraiture (people at work), simple wildlife and nature as well as some still life. He also showed us some work he has been doing with creative composites.
He then returned to the main subject of the evening showing us images from Churches, Chapels and Cathedrals; Docks, Harbours and Mariners; Working Places, Rail Sidings and Industrial Sites and Antiques and Collectables (reclamation yards).
For those who would like to emulate his work he had plenty of good advice. Firstly, using a long lens is useful and zooming in on an image from some distance works well for things like parts of buildings. Look out for angles and shadows that create the image you want and take a big enough image to allow appropriate cropping to a size and shape that suits the image. The background is important and should not detract from the main subject. He gave us some useful tips for that, like having someone wearing a suitably coloured coat or cardigan stand behind the object you are photographing. His other tips included making absolutely sure of where you want your focus point to be (for him it is often the bit that shouldn’t be there) and using the rule of thirds and a tripod wherever you can.
Simon's talk was interesting, entertaining and informative and he had a friendly and relaxed style of presentation which made for a very enjoyable evening.
Next week’s meeting, at the Rugby Club, is a Still Life Photography evening so remember to bring your camera and tripod. There will be several set-ups for you to photograph but if you have anything you think would make a good still life subject please feel free to bring that along too. There will also be a tutorial, given by Nick, on mounting, for those who would like some guidance in this area.
Peter reminded everyone about the Masters of Print competition. The full details are in a bulletin on this website and the closing date for our entries is 19 November. We are at the Rugby Club for that evening so bring your prints and digital images with you to hand in.
Please also remember that next week is the hand in date for our November competition. Themed, ‘Past its Best’, and the open. This is a PDI competition so images must be loaded onto the website by next Wednesday