Creative – Dunedin Photographic Society

The 50th Dunedin Festival of Photography is coming!

09/03/2023cameracrafteditor

We’re really excited to be presenting the 50th Festival of Photography this year! On 1 April, entries will open, and the Dunedin Photographic Society invites you to join the hundreds, if not thousands, of photographers who have participated in this exhibition since its inception in 1968.

This year, there will once again be both print and projected image sections, with Open, Natural History, Monochrome and Portraiture categories in both – plenty of options to cover all the photographic bases. Selected images will be curated into an exhibition that will be shown at the Dunedin Community Gallery from 3 – 11 June.

For more info and to enter from 1 – 16 April, go here – and good luck! With your help, we’re looking forward to producing an exhibiton to be proud of!

Focus Groups: Projects and Sets Photo-a-day challenge

31/08/202131/08/2021cameracrafteditor

Earlier this month, the Projects and Sets focus group ran a 15 day ‘Photo a day challenge’, which was fantastic practice for the current lockdown 😲 The only criteria was that the photo should be taken on the day it was posted – no other limits. About 11 people took part, and it’s certainly spurred many of us on to keep creating. Thanks very much to David Steer for running it all, and Ferg Campbell for being star commenter! Here are some of our highlights:

Noelle Bennett
Linda Ritchie
Nicola Pye
Melanie Dick
Simone Jackson
Ferg Campbell
Tony Pomfret
Kate Burton
Jo McLeary
David Steer
Barbara Newton
Simone Jackson
Tony Pomfret
Noelle Bennett
Nicola Pye
Linda Ritchie
Melanie Dick
Kate Burton
Jo McLeary
David Steer
Barbara Newton
Ferg Campbell
Linda Ritchie
Kate Burton
Melanie Dick
Nicola Pye
Simone Jackson
Noelle Bennett
Tony Pomfret
Barbara Newton
Jo McLeary
David Steer
Ferg Campbell

If any other Focus Groups or members have any projects or news they’d like to post here, please let me know at cameracraft.dpsnz@gmail.com

– Nicola

Photo Walk: Scavenger Hunt, May 2021

17/06/2021cameracrafteditor

We recently had a Scavenger Hunt photo walk around the University campus, where participants were given a list of 12 topics to inspire their photos at the start of the walk. The plan had originally been to take these photos anywhere between Dunedin and Lawrence over a few hours, but the weather was so wet that we decided to stick to somewhere where we could find shelter quickly! We hope you enjoy the results.

Nicola

Focus Groups: NatMAT

16/10/2020cameracrafteditor

Thanks to Judith for putting this together for us recently – looks like the NatMAT group has been a hive of activity!

Themes and Fieldtrips

What has the Nature – Macro – Astro – Timelapse (NatMAT) focus group been doing??

Well, we started with a chat and found out we were keen on photographing pretty much anything ‘outside’, taking part in field trips, and learning from our colleagues. So with those things in mind we set up a field trip to the Botanic Gardens.

The aim was to take some macro images. We had a beautiful afternoon of sunshine with nearly a dozen of us finding bees, weevils, flowers (especially yellow flowers!), yellow and black bugs, and some fungi. These images got critiqued at our next face-to-face meeting, and we learnt good ideas from each other.

Then COVID-19 came along and turned the world upside down!

Nature-Macro pivoted to online! We decided to meet once a week (Sunday evening) using the DPS Zoom room, sharing images based on a theme.

We started with ‘My Garden Inhabitants’ which showed up some skills within our group. We’ve challenged ourselves with birds, water, focus stacking (after Ged shared some techniques for focus stacking), fungi, insects (after a DPS presentation on insect photography), ‘creative nature’ (after some ideas from Tulipa), astro/stars, and always open.

As soon as we moved to level 1 Nature-Macro scheduled a field trip!!

In mid July another dozen or so of us arrived at Yellowhead, Broad Bay, again on a stunningly clear beautiful afternoon with a low tide. We enjoyed a wonderful slow stroll around the point with images of birds, krill, harbour, sky, boats, and lots of the cliff face. All supported with lots of chat, catching up, and friendships – new and old.

Our club colleagues from the Astro-Timelapse focus group opted to come along and join in. As the group size expanded, so did our name!!

More recently, we’ve learnt from Karen about the different twilights, and the transition from light to dark. We’ve challenged ourselves to use that learning with astro and twilight themes. More trips and themes have included Purakanui, birds in flight, green, weather, asymmetry, black and white, and Aramoana.

This week we’re working on spring images, thinking about other things we’d like to do, and hoping for a nice enough weekend to visit Aramoana. If any of this sounds like you, please come along – DPS Zoom room, Sunday, 7:30pm.

Here are some of the images that we’ve taken and shared and learnt from:

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Judith

Triptychs: Three reasons to give it a go

19/06/2018projectedimagesecretaryLeave a comment

The 2018 Nelson National Triptych Salon is open for submissions, so if you’re not a regular creator of triptychs, here are three reasons why you should give it a go.

It stimulates creativity
Your post processing skills will have improved by the time you’ve finished
It’s fun

Some examples, ideas and the concept of a triptych here

How to make a triptych in Photoshop or in Elements

All the information you need to to enter the National Triptych Salon is here, including further help on making a Triptych.

Regardless of entering the Salon, why not share your triptychs on the DPS Facebook page.

Trip3

Ian Thomson’s tribute to the Otago Peninsula

27/11/2017dunedinphotogsoc

DPS member Ian Thomson is featured in the latest issue of the Down in Edin Magazine. Take a look at his tribute to the Otago Peninsula.

Getting creative with Jenny: Part 3

25/05/201725/05/2017dunedinphotogsoc

In this 3 part special feature Dunedin Photographic Society member Jenny Longstaff shares how she goes about creating her fascinating artworks that start as simple photos. [PART 1] [PART 2]

Here is another design, utilising just one photo (a maple tree in Dunedin Botanic Garden) copied and modified with various Photoshop effects. The photos were then positioned and arranged in InDesign to a large file size as the final design was printed onto a PVC “banner” for display in the Botanic Garden.

Photoshop effects included manipulating colour balance and channel mixers, inverting colours, and using “twirl” in the “distort” filter menu.

2.colour play

The design is called “Variations for Vivaldi”, aiming to achieve a feeling of The Four Seasons and musical rhythms (the 5 wriggly lines at the bottom of the banner).

Getting creative with Jenny: Part 2

18/05/201725/05/2017dunedinphotogsoc

In this 3 part special feature Dunedin Photographic Society member Jenny Longstaff shares how she goes about creating her fascinating artworks that start as simple photos. [PART 1]

Here is another design, called “Maritime Networks”, created from 4 separate photos of fishing net details (location: Taieri Mouth) arranged into patterns, with a photo of fishing boats (location: Moeraki).

I chose 4 fishing net photos, paying attention to the colours and angles of the rope strands, then in Photoshop I modified the proportions so they were each equal-sized squares. The photos were then placed on a blank page in InDesign program, repeated and mirror-imaged as necessary, achieving a kaleidoscope effect – my version of “knitting” the designs into fishermen’s jerseys (or guernseys, or Arran-Isle patterns) As an aside: did you know that, in the past, each fisherman’s hand-knitted woollen jumper was unique, so he could be identified if he drowned?

You will notice that the top woven band includes vertical fish-shapes. The top circle represents the Moon; the bottom circle is the Earth, and the large dotted circle represents the connection with the Moon influencing the tides. It also represents maritime navigation with the stars or lights.

Getting creative with Jenny: Part 1

11/05/201708/05/2017dunedinphotogsoc

In this 3 part special feature Dunedin Photographic Society member Jenny Longstaff shares how she goes about creating her fascinating artworks that start as simple photos.

The first 2 images are repeat patterns:

a kereru native NZ pigeon – photographed on my back yard clothesline
an Australian rainbow lorikeet – photographed when I was hand-feeding it at Broulee on NSW south coast.

I removed the backgrounds (in Photoshop) so the shapes of the birds were clearly defined. Through my past working life as a book designer, I am familiar with the InDesign program, so I use that to position my photos on a blank page (dimensions to my own choice), then arrange copies of the photo to create the repeat patterns. Using commands such as copy and paste, mirror image, and flip vertically or horizontally, or changing the angle of placement, brings in as much variety as I need.

For the kereru design my main preoccupation was to create an ambiguous design of positive and negative areas that would not be immediately recognisable. In fact, some people never see the birds until they are pointed out to them!

For the lorikeet parrot designs I was playing with the vibrant colour arrangements. The images were included in an exhibition I held during the International Science Festival, which I called “Pigments of Imagination”, aimed at children. It was about colour theory and mixing, so the bird’s plumage was a good example of primary and secondary colours. I arranged them to enhance the feeling of rhythm and energy, and colour vibrations. A drop-shadow effect was added to the larger single bird to make it more 3-dimensional.