Members of the Society gathered together recently for a ‘practical’ evening. Working in small groups, everyone concentrated on learning new skills as they helped each other with many tips and suggestions to produce many creative images.
The evening began with an auction of various photography and videography items which had been donated to the Society. The proceeds of any sales being divided between the IOMPS and Hospice, upon which we rely so much as Island residents. There was a variety of items from books on photography, to camera bags, filters, mono pods, studio lighting, and various backdrops and light stands, LED lights and even camera rain covers. Our acting President did a fantastic job as auctioneer for the evening with an impressive amount being raised.
The aim of the evening was to learn how best to capture images in one of the four workshop areas, which had been set up in advance by the more experienced members. The theme for the evening was learning the techniques for the wide range of (unpredictable) images that could be achieved from photographing oil on water, soap bubbles and light painting.
Our Acting President Jeremy Broome-Smith led the way in his set-up for photographing the results of mixing oil with water in a shallow glass dish, containing the oil and water suspended over an I-pad. This fairly straightforward arrangement, without the expense of utiising expensive equipment and lighting, to create images with various backgrounds which was the principal point of the evening.
One of our Committee members, Martin Sanderson, chose a black background, with the option of red or blue lighting, to photograph bubbles (of which they were plenty often overflowing from the dish intended to contain the mixture, whereas another Committee member, Wayne Hargrave, had gone to considerable effort to set up a small studio area with overhead lighting through a soft box to enable members photograph the colours within a soap bubble, which again resulted in several interesting images.
Our treasurer, Nigel Owen, took charge of the Light Painting area. His chosen subject being a skull set against a black background and utilising coloured fibre optic lights to "paint" colour onto the object whilst using a very slow camera exposure to produce more amazing lighting effects and interesting images.
This was a highly successful evening thoughly enjoyed by our members with the best results being those achieved by using a tripod and a macro lens, certainly with the oil and water and soap bubble shots. A few members chose to use cameras while others used their mobiles, or a mixture of both.
A huge thank you must go to the various Committee members for their work in setting up the workstations and for their guidance and advice.
The next meeting will take place at 7.00 pm on Wednesday 21st October, when Sean Corlett will entertain us by sharing his “Photographic Journey" and also the print, digital and mobile phone entries will be due in for the first ‘Open’ competition.
By Antony Hamilton
