Not Bad!
Here's the rundown:
First Place Awards: CCC--5; SECCC--5
Second Place Awards: CCC--11; SECCC--8
Third Place Awards: CCC--13; SECCC--11

Think we look good? The numbers are on our side but it's not as great as you might think.
We won because we had far more entries than they did.
CCC--101; SECCC--62
Participants: CCC--15, SECCC--12

Congratulations award winners! Good job!
And thanks to all of you who participated and showed up to support the "team". 

Continuing with the seminar schedule covering “Techniques”, George covered “Additional Lighting”, "Extended Depth of Field" and "Macro Photography".


Additional Lighting:
He was excited about a great find at Costco; a 15 x 106 candlepower light for $29.95. He recommended it both for long .distance landscape lighting and for “painting with light”. He was able to light up shadows many hundreds of feet away. No one asked where he plugged it in! Perhaps his car?

He was quite enthused by LED lights, in particular the fact that they do not heat up and so can be left on for long periods. He made use of this for time lapse photography and showed a video of compiled still shots of daffodils opening. He had created a light studio with 3 LED lights [sold as clip on lamps for bed time reading]. The lights were on 24 hrs a day for several days. I should mention he as a programmable gizmo on his camera that can be set to take the shots at selected intervals.

To boost the power of an electronic flash for wildlife photography he recommended a Fresnel lens attachment from Better Beamer [$40]. It focuses the light just where you need it making the flash more efficient. It is good for both fill flash at long distances or where there is no ambient light. The downsides are that you may get 2 catchlights in the eyes and auxiliary power packs to run your camera or flash are very expensive. The extra catchlight can be removed in Photoshop. For long distances he recommends setting the flash 1 ½  stops less than the sky exposure—expose for the sky. This will look most natural. For closer subjects, the flash should be set 1-3 stops less than the ambient lighting.

For macro shots he preferred a twin light because the light positions are adjustable.

Don’t forget to use fill flash where appropriate.

Another new technique that is getting attention is “Extended Depth of Field”. This technique goes beyond what you can achieve with small apertures—front to back, everything is tack sharp. This of course requires software. Three that he has worked with are the AutoBlend Layers in Adobe Photoshop, Helicon Focus and Zerene Stacker. His preference is Zerene Stacker.

The technique requires you to take multiple shots of the subject gradually moving the focus from the fore to the mid to the back. Of course your on a tripod! Work with your best f/stop. For most lenses it’s f/8 or f/11, and possibly f/5.6. All exposures should be the same so manual is the way to go here. If the subject moves, it’s not going to work out.

In Photoshop, you would open all the shots as layers, auto align then auto blend.

Helicon Focus works better than PS but is an expensive additional program. In it, you must have areas of overlapping focus. He finds that Zerene Stacker is easier, better and I think is less expensive.

He’s also had success doing hand held depth series and combining them the same way though not for macro shots. He cautions that this is not a perfect technique.

He next covered “Macro” photography. His preferred macro lens is 100-105mm. He also recommended extension tubes with a regular lens. Putting a 25mm extension tube on a telephoto lens will allow you to focus closer to the subject. Or, use a 12mm tube on a wide angle lens to get a different perspective.

Another technique is to pair a tele-extender and a macro lens. For example, a 2x tele extender with a 180mm macro lens gives you 360mm and 2x magnification. Be sure your extender is matched to your lens. One caution is that you can lose some sharpness with a tele-extender but with a good lens this wont’ be noticeable.

Advice for shooting macros: Be sure to get a lot of different angles. Try to show something different from what everyone is used to seeing. It will hold their interest more. Think: closer, sharper, more colorful, different angle.

More techniques in another blog post coming up.

My 2 cents on the recent joint competition:

Fifteen members of CCC went image to image with twelve members of SECCC on April 4th. Well, we submitted 101 to their 62. We have over 40 members now, I think. I’m a bit disappointed at the poor showing. I’ll allow that not everyone is interested in competing. You may think your work still needs some improvement and isn’t good enough. You may think that the judging is too subjective; too arbitrary and therefore meaningless. You may not have had time to prepare images for the competition. I shamelessly coerced a member who happens to be a good photographer but hates competition, to enter just to help boost our showing. The joint competition is a team exercise. Few of us take the scoring very seriously and we certainly never agree 100% with the judging. But it is one of the few opportunities we have to put forth our best work for others to appreciate and to show what we find interesting. It can become a personal challenge to simply strive to better your own scores, to compete with yourself in a way, rather than worry about how you compare to other members. Learning is not just about photos that need work as we see in the critiques but also about seeing what we consider our best work and being inspired. The more I look at good photos the more ideas I get for how to better my shots. Art should be shared. Our mutual interest in photography should be about sharing what we’ve done as well as how we do it.

I congratulate all those who participated, whether or not you scored well, you had the guts and team spirit to give it a shot. I hope you all were inspired a little too. And next April I hope to see more names on the list of joint competition participants.

Tips on what the judges are looking for:

1. FOCUS. If nothing else, be sure your subject is in focus. Soft, dreamy images may be artistic but won’t do well in a camera club competition.

2. Defined subject. A cluttered image usually won’t do well. If there are other elements in the scene they should support the subject, not compete with it. Avoid distracting elements. Lots of times you don’t notice them in the viewfinder.

3. Exposure and tone. Faded and dull, thumbs down. Too dark with no detail in the shadows, thumbs down. Blown out highlights, thumbs down. Don’t be afraid to give your colors a boost. Very few images are perfect straight out of the camera.

4. Dynamic & balanced composition. A centered subject is usually too static. Too much blank space competes with the subject. Look for angles, curves and leading lines to make an image visually exciting. Crop if you need to.

5. Be interesting. I’ve heard this more than once. “Everything has already been photographed”. Make your shot more interesting than all the others before. Joe McNally said, “If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more interesting stuff.”