DIG News - May 2019
‘Incoming Tide – Lindsay Southgate Joint winner of the DIG monthly competition for April
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DIG MONTHLY ONLINE COMPETITION
May 2019
This month we have joint winners to celebrate. Congratulations to Lindsay Southgate for her beautiful seascape ‘Incoming Tide’ (on the front cover) and last months winner is obviously on a roll as Jenni Cheeseman is again our other joint winner with ‘Ghost Ship’.
Lindsay Southgate In January this year I spent 10 days in Iceland exploring the amazing scenery and experiencing the winter light which is so different to that in the UK. At Jokulsarlon Ice Beach we had an amazing sunrise (at 11am!). I was captivated by the black sand contrasting with the strong surf and the incredible orange sky. I also wanted to show the fragility of the ice pieces as they were tossed on the surf. The low light meant that no filters were needed to slow down the shutter speed to emphasize the beautiful curl of the waves. Earlier in the trip we had experienced some really difficult wind and rain conditions but that day was one of those days which a landscape photographer dreams of – when all the elements come together at just the right time!
Jenni Cheesman One dull, misty morning I came across this sailing boat at anchor in the Camel Estuary. The surroundings did not do it any favours, but I thought it might make an interesting ICM subject. I took a few shots with an up/down motion, the best were ones with very little movement. In processing, to give atmosphere, I added a gritty overlay, then an image of trees and bushes, blended so the viewer was looking through them towards the ship. I also added a flock of birds, which I felt completed the image, giving it the sort of atmosphere I had envisaged. 2
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Ghost Ship
Third placed was Andre Bergmans with his ‘Composition of Trees’
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DIG EXHIBITION WINNER PRESENTATION It is rare for the winner of the annual DIG Exhibition to have their trophy presented to them by someone as eminent as Joe Cornish, but such was the case this year. Joe was the speaker at DIG South East Centre so was asked to do the honours and make the presentation to Sue Dixon LRPS, for her wining print ‘Flamingo and Feathers’. Sue gets to keep the trophy for 12 months but the accompanying RPS Gold medal in perpetuity. Two other ladies in the S.E. were also Ribbon winners, so the occasion was something of a special celebration for the Centre to be achieving such a great result from their membership.
Sue Dixon LRPS receives the trophy and gold medal from Joe Cornish 4
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Janine Ball LRPS was awarded the Eddy Lane Ribbon – seen here with Joe Eileen Wilkinson ARPS won the Irene Froy Ribbon but was not present.
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MEMBER DISTINCTIONS It is good to see our members working hard towards the various Distinctions. This is a sound way to improve your own photographic skills as you aim ever higher. Don’t forget that there is plenty of support for you and no-one needs to feel as if they are trying to work it out on their own. If you cannot get along to a UK based Distinctions Advisory Day then HQ offer online advice – go to HERE to read more. DIG Accolade also shows you examples of members work and their stories of how they put their panels together. All the back copies of this online publication can be accessed by being logged in to the RPS web site. When it says My RPS in the top RH corner then simply follow this link to read the back copies of Accolade HERE - see the link on the RHS of the page This month we congratulate the following members for achieving their Distinctions.
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Simon Elsy LRPS Stephen Smith LRPS John Wright LRPS Jayne Lucas LRPS Peter Pullan LRPS
Australia Merseyside Surrey Dorset Australia
Elizabeth Akers ARPS Janine Ball ARPS Simon Street ARPS John Tickner ARPS
King’s Lynn Deal Esher Leamington Spa
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WELCOME to our new members this month‌ Jeffery Hargreaves LRPS Leonard Viner-Caudrey Diana Wilkins ARPS Sheila Sargeant Raymond Bailey LRPS Michelle Howell LRPS Diane Long LRPS Vincent Cunningham LRPS Phillip Brown Maurice Young LRPS Lisa Bukalders LRPS Colin Allport Michael Murray David Purnell LRPS Karen Saunders Barbara Jones Michael Cant Angela Haworth LRPS Philip Westwood Alessia Peviani Robin Price Graham Charsley James Fraser Charles Wale David Jenner Peter Knight Fiona McGowan LRPS Mark Freeth Terry Chambers Leonora Mason Christopher Lawrence Derek Tasker Roy Kerley
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Bristol London Exeter Sevenoaks Horsham Wakefield Herne Bay Holmfirth Orpington Thetford Bridport Dareham Banbury Middlesbrough Ashford Stourport-on-Seven Sudbury Belper Eastbourne Netherlands Wigan Bagshot Malton Australia Tonbridge Preston Wotton Stafford Sheffield Trowbridge Southend-on-Sea Dundee Belfast
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DIG CENTRES
May 2019
All DIG Centre meetings are open to everyone. Each puts on a minimum of 4 meetings p.a., offering varied and inspiring content. All welcome to every DIG meeting; members and nonMembers alike.
DIG Eastern Centre
DIG Thames Valley Centre
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DIG South East Centre
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DIG Scotland Centre
DIG North West Centre
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DIG Western Centre
May 2019
DIG Yorkshire & North East Centre
By clicking on any of the Ads it will take you to the RPS Events pages where more information can be found about the meetings.
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SIG LINK
May 2019
By clicking on any of the Ads it will take you to the RPS Events pages where more information can be found about the meetings. RPS HOUSE - Bristol
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CREATIVE EYE - GLASGOW
May 2019
CREATIVE EYE - GREENWICH
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Do remember that when accessing these ‘DIGITAL CAMERA’ online links to only click where it says ‘’105 images” as other links and enticing arrows are to adverts!
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MEMBER EXHIBITION
May 2019
This is a great opportunity to see the work of a DIG Member whom many of you will have known and admired over the years. Having seen an exhibition of his last year I can highly recommend it.
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KEN PAYNE TUTORIALS Greetings Members - This video will show you how to create light beams for sunsets and even woodland scenes. Done in Elements 2018 can be done in earlier versions and of course Photoshop CC. Ken Payne
In the next tutorial Ken shows us how to use an action to remove dust spots. This could be useful‌..
click on the images to take you to the relevant tutorial video on You Tube
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VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION The RPS runs on volunteers. Without them virtually nothing would happen. DIG is particularly lucky to have strong tams of volunteers whether in the central committee or in the Centre’s around the UK. In recognition of their work HQ runs a Certificate of Appreciation scheme and fairly recently the Chief Operating Officer, Mike Taylor, was on hand to present a 4 year certificate to our DIG web content volunteer, Chas Hockin LRPS. Well done Chas and thank you for all your hard work to make things happen for us.
Chas Hockin (left) receives his certificate from Mike Taylor 19
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A UK MEMBER Our featured UK member this month lives in Grimsby with currently no DIG Centre that he has been able to get along to. However with the new DIG Yorks & Ne Centre holding meetings in York, and a venue really near to the train station, Mike Stringer tells that it will at last facilitate him attending DIG meetings. So welcome Mike – do tell us a little more about yourself.
My photographic journey started many years ago in my late teens when I bought my first camera to capture my adventures with my mates. Then in my thirties, the first of our three children came along, and like most parents you have to take a photo of them. I continued shooting in auto and waited for my pictures to come back from Truprint. It was not until 2010, when I attended a six week photographic course, that I really got hooked and saw the potential of what could be achieved with a camera. When I started to get serious, I tried most subjects: Landscapes, Wildlife, but I have always liked and played sports. This is what gets me excited because you never know what you might have captured until you download your images. Another new passion is Portraiture. After attending a Portrait course, and with the help of a close friend, I now find myself looking at people differently. Getting the light right to do the image justice is quite a challenge. My next objective is getting fifteen portrait images ready for my Associate. I like a Challenge‌. Mike Stringer LRPS
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Butterfly
Jet Surfer 21
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Shaz
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The Hit Man
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AN OVERSEAS MEMBER
Our overseas member this month is a lady we featured back in early 2018. At the time she offered us two potential articles and sets of images and we selected the work about her mother. But this set also appealed to us so we have saved it to share with you this month. Welcome back Antionette Castro. Thank you for sharing your beautiful images with us.
THIS IS A FLOWER This project was triggered off by an exercise I was required to do for my degree course. I was asked to look at the cover of Ranko Kawauchi ś book “Illuminance” and jot down my thoughts. Whilst researching into it, I came across the Japanese aesthetic concept of Wabi-Sabi ,- “beauty in the imperfect” – which I believe was part of the inspiration behind Kawauchi ś book. The idea is to see the beauty in the subject or object because of its imperfections and impermanence. The images in her book, did indeed make me aware again of the “extraordinary in the ordinary”. This concept was instrumental in forging my project, I realised how desensitised I had become to the beauty of living things around me. I had found a way of surviving, by means of shutting down my senses. “This is a flower”, is made up of 16 portraits I took in my studio of freshly cut-flowers. I wanted to approach my project with a similar perspective to Wabi-Sabi, yet from a different angle. Rather than highlighting the beauty of the subject through its imperfections and simplicity, I wanted instead, to highlight its beauty precisely because of its near perfection and complexities.
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Lady Slipper Orchid With the use of studio lighting, I set out to take my flower portraits from a different visual perspective, accentuating shapes, tones, colours and movement unique to each individual flower and in some cases, digitally manipulating the flower to enhance movement. My aim was to rediscover and reveal the intrinsic beauty in each flower, for by something becoming all too familiar, I had forgotten to see the extraordinary, in what had become ordinary.
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Hydrangea
Calla Lily trumpet 26
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Ranunculus
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DIGIT ARCHIVE We suspect that many of you are unaware of the complete set of DIGITs that are available to you on the web site, so we thought it would be a good idea to ask Chas Hockin to take a look on your behalf and for us to reprint something of interest from any back copy that took his eye. He has chosen to focus on the very first DIGITs. I thought I would bring members attention to the considerable resource that DIG has in the archive of our quarterly magazine DIGIT. We have managed to digitise the whole collection and they are available to all DIG members on the website. Just go to the RPS website, log in, go to this page www.rps.org/DIG and find “The Full DIGIT Archive” link down the right hand side. All editions of DIGIT are there. DIGIT number 1 (Digital Imaging Group Info Tech) was produced in the summer of 1996 and includes an introduction from the then President of the RPS Robert F Moore saying that “I’m sure it won’t be too long before a PC will be as common place in the photographic armory as an enlarger is at present”. Prescient words indeed. He goes on to say, “The end product should be our major concern, the computer is only a means to an end”. How often have we heard that since those days? DIGIT Number 1 goes on to talk about the beginnings of the group under the chairmanship of Barrie Thomas. There is one article showing a suggested basic equipment list working under Windows 95. For me, even as a relative latecomer to the group (10 years ago), it is interesting to see how the group has developed, and how things are still the same. We still showcase members work and talk about the latest equipment as though that will solve all our problems. I thought I would take an article from DIGIT No 2 to explain what I mean. It is by Les Spitz ARPS who I have met as he has been to my camera club as a judge. It talks about his journey to achieving an ARPS with images taken around the Dorset Coast. He talks about transferring
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his images to a Photo CD and how he “improved” the images to meet the requirements of an ARPS. I don’t think in those days Distinctions were done by digital projection as Les mentions that once he has completed this task, he goes into detail about what printer he should use. Then he debates about what paper he should use (plus ça change!). He applied for an assessment in October 1996 and was awarded his ARPS soon after. I will repeat his last paragraph in the article to bring home the fundamental principle of image making. Despite this powerful new photographic tool, the creation of good images still depends on the ability of the photographer to ' see' a good picture, to record it competently, and to have the imagination to enhance it in such a way that it creates a desirable end product; whether it be a record of an event or place, an eye catching advertisement, or 'merely a piece of art' to hang on the wall and enjoy Over the years DIGIT has continued to provide information, guidance and I hope inspiration to all DIG members over the 23 years it has been in production. I know we have members who are “digital only” and can only access the magazine online, but I, for one, still like to read a wellproduced physical copy of a magazine.
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I hope you will continue to like and read forthcoming editions of DIGIT, but do not lose sight of the valuable resource we have in previous editions. Each edition is “searchable” for specific words. If anyone cannot find what they are looking for, please contact me at digweb@rps.org. (Thanks to Alan Cross for the initial work done on digitising hard copies of DIGIT).
VIEWING DIG ONLINE PUBLICATIONS For our online publications, including DIG News, DIG Accolade and the online version of DIGIT we use software that is available online from an organisation called ISSUU. It is extremely simple and robust page turning software that is viewable from just about any device or computer. However we are aware that some members seem to have difficulty so we thought we should recap on how to access the publications and use the software. Firstly we give you the link in the email that comes out to you all telling you when we have uploaded a new version of anything. Simply follow that link and you will arrive directly to the DIG News as displayed on ISSUU. We also give you an alternative link which takes you to the DIG web page which looks like this….
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Whether you link direct to the ISSUU version or go through the DIG web page you arrive at the same place.
To read the publication at full screen you will see a small open box icon in the bottom right hand corner of the DIG news sub screen. Click on this and it becomes full page. Now if you wish to make the print larger you can see a slider with – and + at each end of it. This helps you zoom the page in and out. To turn the page you will see an arrow mid way up on the right and left hand side of the screen – flip through or back using these. Anywhere where we use the word HERE connects you to a relevant link to see (for example) a web page. Finally we also offer the DIG News as a downloadable PDF and that can be downloaded from the web page www.prs.org/DIGNews.
No doubt you have noticed a subtle change of style for this months DIG News. Do give us feedback as to whether this improves it for you - or not ! email DIGNews@rps.org with your comments.
Regards
Janet
Janet Haines ARPS DIG Chair digchair@rps.org
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