25Apr/08Off

May 2008 Newsletter

Upcoming May 7th Meeting

~~Photographer Sarah Millan will be speaking to us about her photography. Check out her superb landscape and portraiture work on her website.~~

Our scheduled speaker, Sarah Millan, will be unable to join us on Wednesday. We''ll hopefully have a backup plan in place for the meeting. If not, we will go for drinks that much earlier! -- (2008-05-07)

The print competition theme will be "paper(s)".

And more...

Learn about why "save often" and "always run a backup first" are rules you should live by
A word from our new president about some changes to judging and upcoming events
Review of Kevin Stenhouse's talk from April
Print competition results and winners from the April meeting
And lots of other amazing content...

So stop holding your breath and keep on reading!

President's Letter

Good day to you all, I hope your all enjoying the great spring weather. The CPS executive and I have had another meeting to discuss upcoming events and some possible changes we would like to see.

First on the list was picking our new theme list for the upcoming year. I hope you like what we dreamed up, and have some fun shooting them. They should now be listed on the webpage under the theme area.

The next topic of discussion was the judging of our print competitions. We felt that a new break down of points may help ease the tension and allow the judges a little more elbow room. The new point system we came up with is as follows :

Open

2 pts - composition
4 pts - technical
4 pts - impact / creativity

Theme

3 pts - theme
3 pts - creativity
4 pts - technical / composition

The new scoring will not be implemented until our September meeting.

The final topic of discussion was some ideas for upcoming events. We are planning to do another photography scavenger hunt with a BBQ to follow. This will probably happen in August and the results shown at the September meeting. We also thought it would be fun to have a ‘best of the year’ print competition in November or December. Instead of a guest speaker, everyone will bring in what they thought was their best print from the previous year. Then, all in attendance will judge all the entries to crown the winner. Final details are still to be worked out.

That’s all for now, see at the meeting.

Ryan Pahl

President, Calgary Photographic Society

Greetings from the Newsletter / Website Guy

Hello again everyone. You're all reading the third generation of this months newsletter. The first version was lost when my browser crashed before I saved the newsletter (Mental note: save early, save often). The second version of this newsletter was lost when I noticed a little indicator on the website saying the webserver software was out of date. Naturally, being a software guy, I couldn't let the software get out of date! Horrors! So I did what any somewhat sleepy and not entirely thinking individual would do. I clicked the "upgrade" button without running the backup that you should ALWAYS run before doing something crazy like that. As Murphy would have it, despite numerous successful upgrades, this upgrade was most decidedly not a success. The upgrade failed having deleted all the data in the database and corrupting the files on the webserver. Oh joy!

Luckily the story doesn't end there. I do make daily backups of both the database and web site files. The majority of the site was easily restored but unfortunately I'd mostly finished the newsletter that day which meant.... not in the backups.

So here you are getting to read the third revision of the newsletter!!! Lucky you...

Hopefully I learned my lesson.

-- Jeff

April Guest Speaker Review - Kevin Stenhouse

Photo by Jeff Clement

I would think it would be rare for a photographer, speaking to photographers, about his photography, to not show a single image during the presentation; but that it what Kevin Stenhouse did and we were captivated. Kevin shared with us how he got into photography and how he approaches his photography. The way he told the story, and the way it unfolded before us, was fascinating. If Kevin were to write a biography, or a novel I would buy it. It was that good!

Kevin started photography with a Kodak Brownie when he was 4 years old and found looking through its viewfinder to be a fascinating way to view the world. He often would wander around with no film, just looking at things from the different perspective. In grade four he had his first taste of developing a B&W print and from that point he was hooked. Kevin still remembers the image and, more importantly, the teachers comment about the image: "Everything you did in that photo is wrong. I love it". Kevin spent years with a point and shoot documenting his family. Despite protests at the time, his family has come to cherish his images.

High-school found Kevin in a new school with no friends. A kid in his class had a cool SLR, showed him how to use it, and invited him to hour the school camera club. Through the wonders of peer pressure Kevin purchased his first SLR, the Yashica FX2. Kevin shot a number of images for the year book and still remembers his two favorite images. He shared with us what they were and how he captured them.

Kevin's career suffered a set back when his parents strongly encouraged him not to pursue photography on the grounds that "Photographers don't make money." I'll make a long story very short and say that Kevin attended university, became a printer for a photolab, then a very good custom printer, and then settled into a 15 year career as a graphics artist.

Kevin stayed somewhat involved in photography throughout and he even got into 4x5 and shot primarily landscapes. However, the tweak-tweak-wait-tweak cycle of film printing was always in the way. Kevin finally made the plunge into digital, switched to shooting people and started shooting a lot of glamour shots for friends. Digital photography exchanged the darkroom (which he didn't like) with laptops and coffee shots (which he loves). In '96 he handed in his resignation and decided to shoot weddings. He shot a wedding and engagement, put together a website, advertised on google, and booked 17 weddings in the first year! In his second year he doubled his rates and has approximately 25 booked.

As for as his personal work? He's still trying to decide where that is going although he gave us some hints as to those who are influencing his work Joel-Peter Witkin, Diana Arbus, and Jean Lapes Yep (I couldn't find this one on the net).

Thanks Kevin!

A few interesting/humourous quotes that I was unable to work into the above text...

"Magicube... Not really the best fill."

"Don't be pointing the camera at people. Prepare. Wait. And the Shoot."

And the obligatory web links...

http://kevinstenhouse.com/

http://qualityoflight.ca/

-- Jeff

April "Open" Print Competition Results

Advanced Category

Advanced Open - Jose Guillen - Fall Colors

Advanced Open - Carla Fedje - <untitled>

Score	Photographer	Title
7.0	Jose Guillen	Fall Colors
7.0	Carla Fedje	<untitled>

Intermediate Category

Intermediate Open - Helmut Schoderbock - Seniority

Score	Photographer	Title
7.6	Helmut Schoderbock	Seniority
7.3	Ryan Pahl	Bomb Run
6.6	Stephen McCracken	London Eye

Novice Category

Novice Open - Jeff Roest - The Noodle Man

Score	Photographer	Title
8.3	Jeff Roest	The Noodle Man
6.3	Mike Johnson	Native Eclipse

April "Theme" Print Competition Results: "Graffiti"

Advanced Theme

Advanced Theme - Jose Guillen - Graffiti in Nature

Score	Photographer	Title
6.3	Jose Guillen	Graffiti in Nature

Intermediate Theme

Intermediate Theme - Stephen McCracken - <untitled>

Score	Photographer	Title
8.0	Stephen McCracken	<untitled>

Novice Theme

Novice Theme - Mike Johnson - Graffiti with Definition

Score	Photographer	Title
7.3	Mike Johnson	Graffiti with Definition

Upcoming Print Competitions Themes

Date	Theme
May 7, 2008	Paper
Jun 4, 2008	Different point of view on a common subject
Sept 3, 2008	B+W
Oct 1, 2008	Bugs / Insects
Nov 5, 2008	Weather
Dec 3, 2008	Travel
Jan 2, 2009	Architecture
Feb 6, 2009	Metal
Mar 5, 2009	Fashion
Apr 2, 2009	Opposites
May 7, 2009	Religion
June 4, 2009	Eye Candy

New Items for Sale

Stephen Butts has a sturdy tripod for sale for $10 .

Web Crawl

Mike Roest provided this link to a D-I-Y "best softbox ever "! It looks to me like it is also the most complex D-I-Y softbox ever! Mike also sent this link to some amusing souvenier photos on flickr .

Marcelo Pinheiro sent this link to photojournalist Brent Stirton's homepage.

The weblinks archive can be found here.

Also. For any members with websites that would like them listed, please e-mail the URL to me at jeff.clement at calgaryphotographicsociety.ca.