Last night's meeting was back in the Rugby Club for a face to face meeting with Janet Miles, as our speaker, with her presentation ‘Creative Trees and Woodland’
The evening did not get off to the best of starts due to encountering some technical difficulties with projecting the images from Janet’s laptop. Nick went off to fetch another projector (which sadly was unable to sort the problem) and in the end we were only able to enjoy Janet’s images by using her memory stick version through our own laptop. Many hands tried their best to get things going but we do need to say a particular thank you to our new member, Peter, who, like everyone else involved, tried his best to get things working but then ended up operating the laptop for Janet for the first half of her talk.
Whilst we were waiting for Nick to bring back the second projector Janet commenced her talk by telling us a little about herself and her photographic journey. She told us about the panel she entered to gain her ARPS, which she had brought with her and displayed for us to view. She had chosen to photograph Woodland scenes using her love of creative works to enhance them with techniques such as multiple exposures and blending.
Once we had sorted out the technical problems she began her talk by telling us that for her the processing of an image is just as important as the taking. Woodland is her favourite subject as she enjoys the amazing textures, colours and light to be found there. When she is planning an image there are some criteria that she uses for that: purpose (why is she taking the image), time (what time of day will give the best light effect), distance (how far does she want/need to travel to get the image and weather (what weather conditions will best give her the result she wants).
Janet explained that whether you were taking images of woodland or single trees there were so many different types to choose from. She showed us images of woodland in water in Louisiana, bluebell woods and ancient oaks amongst others. And through her amazing images we travelled from America to Australia, from India to Norway as well as all over the UK in search of all these different aspects of woodland. She advised us to think about what details we wanted to include and what angles we wanted to take. Photographing whole images or particular parts. Or even small features that could be used to add into another image at some time in the future.
The second half of her talk was about the creative techniques she used when processing her images – blurring, in-camera movement, multiple exposures and adjusting colours. She had been planning to demonstrate some of these techniques to us but was unable to do so because of the technical problems we had experienced.
In spite of the difficulties it was a very informative and enjoyable evening and we did of course get to see some wonderful images