NEWSLETTER MARCH 2005

NEWSLETTER MARCH 2005

FORTHCOMING PROGRAMME

APRIL 12th: An evening with Martin Edge

MAY 10th: Charles Hood on 'Marketing your Work'

'ON THE NIGHT' COMPETITION THEMES

APRIL: Invertebrates

MAY: Wrecks

Important - Please note the changes to the competition format as detailed in Latest News

For the full list of monthly competitions for 2005 see the January Newsletter.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

April Meeting

The April Meeting (start time 2000hrs) will be at our new venue:

Coniston Community Centre

The Parade, Coniston Road

Patchway, Bristol BS34 5LP

To find the Community Centre:- Go up Coniston Road for approx 1 mile until you see a road sign on the left for 'The Parade Shopping Centre' and 'The Surgery'. Turn right into Blakeney Road and then immediately right again into the car park for the Surgery. The Community Centre is directly opposite the Surgery. Click here for map or use www.multimap.com

Please try and be on time as it looks as if we will have to keep the main doors locked while we are using the building. However, there is an intercom entry system so you should be able to get in if running late.

The 'On the Night' competition theme is 'Invertebrates'. You all have something to fit the theme so please get them in to David Stephens in good time.

The main event of the evening will be a presentation by Martin Edge who will talk about a variety of techniques but primarily on 'lighting' and 'wide angle'. This should be an excellent opportunity to learn from one of the UK's leading professionals.

BUPG Splash-In: 14 May 2005

Our very own Splash-In will be shore-based at Babbacombe. The rules will be published in due course.

BSOUP Plymouth Splash-In: 2/3 July 2005

The boat has been booked by Sally Sharrock and is probably full by now.

BSOUP St Abbs Splash-In: August 27/28th 2005

Possibly one place available if you get in quick - contact Heather Hammond.

RECENT EVENTS

March Meeting

The venue was our new home in The Coniston Community Centre and this met with universal approval. The facilities are first class, bigger than we have previously used and should enable us to expand our membership. The only downside is the lack of permanent projector screen. A solution is being sought but, in the meantime, if anyone has a decent sized (more than four foot) portable screen then let me know.

The Annual Print Competition attracted 21 entries and some high quality work was displayed. There were some very nice trophies for the first three places in each category, plus the trophy for the overall winner. The results were:

British:

Ist - David Stephens (john dory)

2nd - Alan James (squat lobster)

3rd equal - Sally Sharrock (ballan wrasse) & Heather Hammond (cuttlefish eye)

Overseas:

1st - Sally Sharrock (anthias)

2nd - Alan James (dugong)

3rd - David Stephens (jellyfish)

Overall Winner:

Sally Sharrock

A tally of the points revealed a tie between Alan & Sally but, using the principle of first placings, Sally was declared the overall winner. Her winning images are shown below.

The 'On the Night' competition theme of 'Mammals' produced some good images of dugongs, manatees, seals and a couple of divers - surprisingly there were no dolphins. All images had been emailed to David who had sorted them and added numbers. This made the voting process somewhat easier. The first vote resulted in a tie between Steve Judd (barnacled manatee) and Alan James (seal pup). On the second vote, the puppy factor prevailed and Alan was declared the winner. Images below:

Following on from the competitions, Alan gave a short presentation on how his Nikon D70 had performed on a recent trip to Babbacombe. Straight out of the camera, the results are certainly better than from the D100 but Alan feels that the D100 files may be more responsive in Photoshop than those from the D70. He had some good images of tube worms which worked well when shown as a portfolio of six. With his upcoming BSOUP presentation in mind, he had also put together a mixed British portfolio which included the seal image above. However, Alan felt the portfolio looked a little unbalanced and showed another but this time with the seal cropped to a tight portrait. This worked very well and was a good demonstration of how it is so easy to heavily crop a digital file that is intended for projection.

During the interval there was a raffle for a Nikon optical mouse which had been generously donated by Alan & Heather. This added quite a few pounds to the BUPG kitty. If anyone else feels they have something they would like to donate this could help our funds considerably.

The rest of the evening was given over to Heather who explained some of the mysteries of Adobe Photoshop. Topics covered were requested from the floor and ranged from basic techniques such as 'Levels' through to some quite advanced stuff such as using 'Multiply' to darken highlights. Some of it would have been a little too advanced for the newer users of Photoshop but all would have learned something and was a good demonstration of what the software is capable of doing. For me, a trip to the shop for some personal tuition has got to be worthwhile.

Many thanks are due to Alan & Heather for their presentations, especially as they had only recently returned from a gruelling stint at the London Dive Show.

MISCELLANEOUS

BSOUP Competitions

There is no excuse now for not entering the BSOUP competitions as they are now accepting entries via email - Heather Hammond took a third place in January with a shot of a barracuda shoal. Their March competition (March 16th) is for Themed Portfolios and this ties in with Alan James who is the guest speaker at that meeting and who will be giving a presentation on portfolios. I am sure Alan would be pleased to see some of our work being entered. Check out www.bsoup.org for further details.

Keep bubbling(rebreathers excepted)

Arthur