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Shadows! -
January 2005 assignment
30.
Shadows!
Mysterious, stark, gauzy ... shadows define our life and bring
our environment into focus. Or not! With no limits to the
imagination, we sent our photographers out to capture shadows of
every kind, home brew and natural. With 27 of the 30 assignment days
buried in overcast skies, it was a challenge to get Mother Nature to
cooperate, but our shooters remained undaunted and met the
assignment head-on with excellent creativity!
The CAUG DigiCam
SIG meeting was held on February 15 at the Parkdale library.
With a full
dockett at our February DigiCam SIG, we began our meeting with emcee
Patty Beasley handing out entry forms for H-E-B's South Texas
Christmas Snow Photo Contest held during February. Thank you, Patty,
for your thoughtfulness as some of us did enter. New attendees were
signed-in making 15 attendees and two digital SLRs being passed
around received considerable slobber.
Rockport resident Brian Jacobs volunteered to do an assignment on
Histograms while he was still a Corpus Christ resident. His
PowerPoint can be found on this site linked from the HOW-TO page -
"How-To Lessons", #17, "Harnessing Histograms". Briefly, the
Histogram can be brought up in some cameras' LCD while you are
shooting to help you make correct exposures. A continuum of 255
vertical lines show varying amounts of solid white to solid black
and all shades of gray and color in-between. This accurately
represents the values in the photo you just took. Brian says most
sources place the black on the right and white on the left and if
your camera or software switches this around, just mirror-image
these diagrams. If you have a line creeping up one side of the chart
or the other, picture details will be lost, so make appropriate
camera adjustments. An ideally exposed photo will look like a single
camel's hump with a low slope all the way to each end. But, Brian
says, there are no rules. Software like Paint Shop Pro can help
adjust the histogram if your camera does not have this feature. Our
presenter concluded he would not have learned as much if he hadn't
done all the online research -- a benefit of volunteerism. Thanks,
Brian!
SIG leader John Hoffmann gave us a Your Best Ever Photos assignment
in November and not everyone (like Bruce) finished collecting them
for the January meeting. So Bill Draper and Joan Stephens showed 28
of their favorites. With a home on the west side of Padre Isles,
Bill has collected many superb sunsets. He also shows one of the
best hummingbird shots Bruce has ever seen. Of course his Blue Heron
friend, Ol' Blue gets in a picture also. Joan is a world traveler
and we often get to go with her, vicariously (thanks for that word,
Patty), to the far ends of the earth. This time, we see beautiful
scenes of the Amazon and at Machu Picchu and intricate art painted
on an Oriental hotel ceiling.
Shadows was the February assignment. With no limits to the
imagination, we sent our photographers out to capture shadows of
every kind, home brew and natural. With 27 of the 30 assignment days
buried in overcast skies, it was a challenge to get Mother Nature to
cooperate, but our shooters remained undaunted and met the
assignment head-on with excellent creativity! You've GOT to see
online the excellent work shown by our members. Go to the first
website above and this time to the red "Monthly Photo Assignments".
Then click the top this time, "Shadows" entry, to see for yourself.
Ben Luna gave our ending presentation in the form of a video of
slides, or VCD. The photos were taken by a good friend while a WWII
photographer in 1945. Ben put together the VCD as a favor to refresh
old memories. He cleverly set the photos of military life and
artillery to music of the era, like the original \i Sentimental
Journey\i0 . Ben added zooming for a dramatic effect. The 14-minute
presentation showed the early photographer had good compositional
skills on distant Pacific Islands like Iwo Jima, even without the
DigiCam SIG for guidance!
NEXT DIGICAM MEETING: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 7-8:30pm, Parkdale
Branch Library.
Photo assignment for February is Water! This one's wide open. Living
in a coastal zone, it might seem to be a no-brainer assignment, but
here's where you can also stretch those creative brain cells and
find the water angles and water shots no one else will find! Water
comes in many forms and can be found in many places ... let your
camera show us where.
- Bruce Switalla and Patty Beasley
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