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36.
People At Work
People do fascinating
things and sometimes the things we do for a living are among the
most intriguing. For your August meeting assignment, it's "People At
Work". If you're retired, go find some folks who aren't. If you
work, you have a ready-made pool of potential subjects. Don't forget
to get permissions where appropriate!
Twelve hardcore
members of the DigiCam SIG gathered on the usual third Tuesday of
the month to view each others monthly assignment photo marvels. The
assignment was PEOPLE AT WORK. Nice overall meeting.
Bill Draper started off with pictures of beach sand removal via
heavy equipments. He then caught photos of cement bulkhead repairs
including the arrival of the big, big cement truck. Finally, there
were photos of a stone mason's work.
John Hoffmann showed some worker "bees" from a recent cruise. There
were porters, chefs, waiters, servers, and even casino dealers. John
also showed several photos of local construction workers -
carpenters way high up, sewer installers, and plasters doing
building external surfaces.
Judy Henderson should a series of photos depicting about 10 young
debs attending a training course. There were examples of food and
table decorations. Finally there was a session of ceramics making as
each girl made a hand held mirror with beautifully
engravings/decorations. (Note: due to the nature of the photos and
for reasons of privacy, these will not be displayed on the web
site).
Patty Beasley started out showing a bright red Coast Guard
helicopter with rotor blades almost stop-action. She had photos of
beach sea grass (mostly beautiful, young gals mixed with the sea
grass settings, with a tv news reporter mixed here and there in the
scenery). She covered the working aspects of TV 3 news room with Joe
Gazin and many of the technicians working to put the show on.
Finally, Patty showed the Port Aransas laboratory students and
professors working with sea urchins.
For the finale, Ken Parsons made a DVD presentation of a house being
built across the canal from his house. It starts with a 1993 picture
of the lot and then with a September 2004 to May2005 construction
period. The secret was to keep the camera in the exact same place at
the same time each day so that the pictures build a step by step
story of the construction and construction workers. Each following
picture just adds one feature to the overall picture - really neat
and well done. What patience!!, Ken. (Note: due to the nature of the
video piece, this will also not be shown on the web site.)
Having viewed all the assignment photos, we turned to our teaching
segment of the evening. The next assignment is BLACK & WHITE. To get
a jump start and have a few tips to get us started, Bruce Switalla
made a very practical presentation gleaned from many Internet
articles and authors.
BLACK & WHITE photos continue to exist as they have artistic and
sometimes practical value as well as their ability to evoke
nostalgic emotions. However, from a technical digital camera
perspective, there is little difference. Think of a B&W photo as a
colored photo robbed of its color saturation. Most digital cameras
have a B&W option but be reminded that if you make a B&W digital
photo you can not create a color photo from the image.
It is best to photograph in color as you can convert to B&W later
via computer software graphics programs and still have a color image
of the scene for future use. This B&W software conversion "magic" is
called desaturation. If done, rename the photo file or you will
permanently lose the original image. During the conversion, you can
include other software effects such as graininess, or a flatter look
or posterizing (some call it solarization). The type of photos gets
involved with whether to convert to B&W or not - some very colorful
images are not good subjects for conversion.
Bruce talked about B&W zones which are various f-stops leading to
the degree of darkness or brightness. Some useful addresses to visit
are as follows:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html)
http://www.completedigitalphotography.com/index.php?p=344#more-344
B&W photography is a real, apparently permanent, outlet. Even
special printers (Epson) exist using three different black shades.
As usual, these instructions as well as all the photos shown can be
viewed at the follow site:
http://www.ccbirding.com/dcsig/
Soooooo, get your camera going for the next month making BLACK &
WHITE photos. No restrictions on subject matter so let it range from
scenery/outdoor shots to people shots. Good opportunity to learn
something new for most of us. This way we get to share our mistakes
also.
For the scribe . . .
John Hoffmann
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