Entries open on July 22nd for the 2019 Dunedin Festival of Photography.
For more information, go to https://dps.org.nz/festival/.

Photowalk

Don’t forget we have a St Clair sunrise Photowalk scheduled for this Sunday, 10 March. Meet at 7:00 AM by the shark bell. We have arranged for the sun to rise at about 7:30 AM. 

A-Z Challenge

During our next meeting (on Monday 11 March) we will project submitted images responding to the letters C and D. The interpretation of each letter is up to you. Please email your photos to Bob Dagg at slides.dpsnz@gmail.com by midnight Fri. 8 March. Title your images with your name and the letter, e.g. Freddie Mercury A or Elizabeth Windsor B. Images should be in jpeg/jpg format, less than 2 MB, and not longer than 1620 pixels on the horizontal and 1080 on the vertical.

You can also post your images as a comment to the C and D posts that David Steer has published on our closed Facebook page (for paid-up members). The purpose of this challenge is to encourage us all to take photos regularly and to share and comment on them. The spirit of this challenge is to generate new work, not to use images from your archive.

Projected Image of the Month Submissions

A reminder that Entries close Midnight Friday the 8th of March

Theme for Month: Flora and Fauna

Upload your submissions here: https://dps.org.nz/piotm

Next Meeting: Monday 11 March at 7:30 PM

Mornington Presbyterian Community Centre, 16 Maryhill Terrace.

What’s up?

• A Short Talk with Praveen Kumar: “My life’s journey as a photographer”
• Gary McClintock: TBC
• Workshop with Ita Daniels: Light Painting (please bring your camera, tripod and light sources)
• Projected Image of the Month: Flora and Fauna, appraised by Gary McClintock (see above for submission guidelines)
• Fortnightly A-Z challenge: C and D (see above for submission guidelines)

Window Display, Scavengers’ Paradise, 414 Princes St., Dunedin, Detail (Mark McGuire)

This post is a reminder about the new A-Z challenge that we have initiated. During our next meeting (on Monday 25 Feb.) we will project submitted images responding to the letters A and B. The interpretation of each letter is up to you. Please email your photos to Bob Dagg at slides.dpsnz@gmail.com by midnight Fri 22 Feb. Title your images with your name and the letter, e.g. Freddie Mercury A or Elizabeth Windsor B. Images should be in jpeg/jpg format, less than 2 MB, and not longer than 1620 pixels on the horizontal and 1080 on the vertical.

You can also post your images as a comment to the A and B posts that David Steer has published on our closed Facebook page. The purpose of this challenge is to encourage us all to take photos regularly and to share and comment on them. The spirit of this challenge is to generate new work, not to use images from your archive.

Mark McGuire (Social Media Secretary)

Woodcut diagram of a visual alphabet and its application from Johann Horst von Romberch’s work on memory, Congestorium artificiose memorie (Venice: Melchiorre Sessa, 1533) (Public Domain Image)

In advance of Clive Copeman’s talk at the first meeting of 2019 (Mon. 11 Feb.) I thought I would provide a summary of a talk he gave on 29 Oct. 2018 (better late than never, right?).

The Dunedin Photographic Society offers opportunities to learn skills that can help us to improve our photography. Often, the best teachers are our fellow members, a few of whom are also professional photographers. On Monday 29 October, professional photographer and DPS member, Clive Copeman, led a workshop on portraiture.

Clive discussed a number of practical and aesthetic approaches to commercial portrait photography, using examples from his work to illustrate his points (a selection of these images is below). It was instructive to discover what goes on behind the scenes of a portrait shoot, including appropriate gear and design considerations. He talked about how he puts his subjects at ease and how he arranges pairs and groups of people in front of the camera — rarely side by side and face on but at angles that create a considered relationship between the individuals. He explained how he plans and composes images that combine studio portraits with background settings that are shot separately (like the first image below). Although natural lighting can be effective, Clive also discussed the use of flash and coloured light to create a mood and enhance the scene. He then demonstrated the effects that are possible with different lighting angles by taking several shots of a volunteer from the audience using lights positioned above, to the sides and below the subject’s face. The difference was pretty dramatic.

You can see more of Clive’s work on his website, Facebook and Instagram, where you can follow his forays into the Otago hinterlands on his #FatBike.

Photos supplied by Clive Copeman.

The first meeting of the Dunedin Photographic Society for 2019 will be at 7:30 PM Monday 11 February at the Mornington Presbyterian Community Centre, 16 Maryhill Terrace. The meeting will include the following:

1) Projected Image of the Month
Summer, appraised by Clive Copeman.

2) The new Fortnightly Challenge
The Council would like to invite you to participate in a new initiative, The A-Z Challenge. Members will submit images for a slideshow to be shown at each meeting, we will cover the full alphabet over the year, starting at the first meeting of the year with the letters A and B. The interpretation of each letter is up to you, be as tenuous or obvious as you please. For example, A for Archive Photo and B for Bee, let your imagination run wild. With the exception of the first week, the spirit of this challenge is to generate new work, not to use images from your archive.

For the first round, please email your images to slides.dpsnz@gmail.com, please title your images with your name and the letter, e.g. Freddie Mercury A or Elizabeth Windsor B. Please have your photos submitted by end of the Friday before each meeting.

3) Short Talk
Our President, Glenn Symon, will give the first Short Talk. This will be a regular feature of our meetings going forward.

4) Speaker
The first speaker to kick off 2019 is Kane Fleury from the Otago Museum.
Topic: Photography at Otago Museum — big, small, complex, fragile, deadlines.

5) Workshop
Clive Copeman will give a workshop on single frame storytelling. He will explore the story content in some well-known images and discuss his own take on how to tell a good story with a single image. Additionally, Clive is offering you the opportunity to submit one of your own pictures for us to examine and talk about on the night. Email your photos to Glenn Symon (president.dpsnz@gmail.com) by 7:00 pm Sunday 10 Feb. (that’s tonight, you laggards).

— Mark McGuire (Social Media Secretary)

Photo: 1082-1088 Queen St. W. Toronto, Canada, 3.40 PM Mon. 8 Oct. 2018 (Detail) by Mark McGuire (CC-BY)

1st Place  – Distorted Reality by Noelle Bennett

2nd Place  – Bale Body by Heidi Beckers

3rd Place  – Disturbance by Dave Wilson

1st Place  – Beat It by David Steer

2nd Place  – This way up I think by Simone Jackson

3rd Place  – Leaf by Bill Stanford

1st Place  – New vs Old by Simone Jackson

2nd Place – Reflectional Symmetry by Noelle Bennett

3rd Place – Knox and Nissan by Bill Stanford