Presenters: John C Smith and Jane Coulter
Report by Barry Dench
Fourteen members plus the presenters and workshop organiser attended the 2.75 hour workshop.
The workshop was the third and final for 2020. Critiquing an image whether by an independent person with solid experience in photography and image assessment or self-critiques is part of the process or journey to making better images. The intention was to concentrate on landscape type and macro images with members invited to provide 4 photos. Bird photography had been covered in a workshop earlier in the year so this was to play a junior role in today’s program. Barry provided bird photos and briefly spoke about these.
John kicked off the workshop with a run down on composition and spoke about the key elements / building blocks making up a strong image. For instance – on arrival at your location, study the scene in front of you, look for repeating patterns, shapes, leading lines, light and shade, colour, texture etc rather than reaching for the camera for some quick shots was one of John’s key messages. John handed out copies of his notes and ran through a set of images to illustrate the points made.
We then moved to John and Jane assessing and commenting on the members photos. This was run through Adobe Lightroom Classic so our presenters were able to offer not only informed advice but to carry out basic adjustments to illustrate ways an image could be improved. This was followed by a brief critique session on the bird images.
From feedback received, I believe this was a very successful workshop and together with John’s handout, provided information of benefit to those attending. My thanks to John and Jane for fronting the presentation and their advice so willingly given.
This workshop has provided building blocks for the next workshop, a field exercise in North Canterbury involving some camera craft and composition challenges.
