Last year, club President Randy O’Hara introduced us to F-Stop, the Owen Sound Camera Club’s monthly newsletter. Also last year, only those who attended the meetings were able to receive it as a handout. This year, we are pleased to tell you that it is now available to everyone, members and non-members alike, right here on our website.
Just look up to the top of the page and in the navigation bar you’ll see the link to the F-Stop page where you can read it online, download it for later, and there is a print friendly version for those who like the tactile feel of paper in hand while you read.
If you like the F-Stop, or maybe you don’t, we’d love to hear your feedback on it, and if there is something you’d like to see in the F-Stop, by all means let us know. Simply go to the Contact page and send us a note.
Wow! Summer has flown by so fast. With the weather we’ve had over the past few months it’s like we went from Spring to Fall. But with Fall comes a new season for the Owen Sound Camera Club.
2017-2018 marks our 61st year as the longest running photography club north of Toronto! We sure must be doing something right! These are exciting times for the OSCC because since we’ve grown so much over the past few years, we’ve been really trying to come up with something of interest for people of all levels of photographic experience.
If you’re interested in the club or are already an existing member, we are always open to new ideas that will make the club more interesting and appealing to everyone. Come to our first meeting of the new season Tuesday September 5 at the New Life Centre, located at 199 4th Avenue West in Owen Sound. There’s a handy map off to the right of this page to show you where we are. The membership fee is $30 and the doors open at 6:30 pm for a half hour of social time before the meeting gets underway at 7:00. Hope to see you there!
Wow. It’s almost gone already, our 60th season! Who would’ve thought back in September of 1956 that this little ole photography club would still be around. And our last meeting of the season is fast approaching – Tuesday, June 6, 2017.
Just a reminder to members that we will have a gear swap from 6:30 till 7 at the next meeting. Bring in your un-wanted, no-longer-needed photography equipment and see what you can get for it. Members looking to score some gear are encouraged to bring a full wallet.
As our next assignment is “Dusk to Dawn” I thought it might be interesting to look at dusk and dawn and how they relate to sunset, sunrise, twilight and the golden and blue hours. We will look specifically at dusk, dawn is just the reverse.
So, we might think dusk is some time around sunset to when it gets dark, but there is a precise scientific definition of what it is. Contrary to what we might think dusk isn’t actually a period of time, it is a point in time. To make things slightly more complex there is more than one level of dusk. In looking at the definition we need to consider events related to the “true horizon”. At many locations the true horizon is obscured by trees, buildings, mountains, etc., and the resulting intersection of earth and sky is called the “visible horizon”.
So, the first event to consider is sunset, this is the time at which the trailing edge of the Sun crosses the true horizon. When the Sun is low to the horizon the atmosphere refracts the light, which means the Sun may still appear to be on the horizon when it has actually already set. After sunset we enter “Civil Twilight”. This continues until the centre of the Sun is 6º below the true horizon and this is the point of “Civil Dusk”. From this point on we are in “Nautical Twilight” until the centre of the Sun is 12º below the true horizon and this is the point of “Nautical Dusk”. After this we move into “Astronomical Twilight” and that continues until the centre of the Sun is 18º below the true horizon and this is the point of “Astronomical Dusk”. After this point we are in Night, this continues until the Sun has risen to 18º below true horizon and this is the point of “Astronomical Dawn” and we follow the same steps e.g. “Astronomical Twilight” to “Nautical Dawn”, etc.
When we look at the times these events occur and how long they last, it gets a bit tricky as the path of the Sun depends on our Latitude and the time of the year as these change the angle the Sun rises and sets. If we look at our next meeting (6th June) we have :
The changes in the position and path of Sun also affect the photographic Golden Hour and Blue Hour. As well as the Sun’s position these hours are also dependent on the local weather and atmospheric conditions. Unlike the descriptions above these don’t have precise technical description and there are a few different interpretations of how to calculate them.
The Golden Hour, or Magic Hour, relates to a period sometime before sunset till sunset, or just after sunset. If we use the information from the site http://www.golden-hour.com/ then it is taken as the time the Sun is 6º above the horizon till sunset. A different site uses an end point of the Sun being 4º below the horizon. Looking at the timings for 6th June we have :
Evening Golden Hour Starts (6º above the horizon) 20:21, ends (sunset) 21:05, duration 44mins. The Blue Hour relates to a period where the golden light has ceased and the light is mainly blue. In this example it is taken from near the end of Civil Twilight to near the end of Nautical Twilight, a good site for Blue Hour information is http://www.bluehoursite.com/. Looking at the timings here for the 6th June we have :
Night Blue Hour Starts 21:27, ends 22:17, duration 50mins
However other sites may give different timings based on different calculations. There is a matching “hours” in the morning. Below is a graphic that shows all the above points.
The Owen Sound Camera Club is proud to announce that we will be having another exhibition at the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery this year. We will keep you posted with more details as the show approaches.
Our next meeting will be at the Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library on March 7, 2017, located at 824 1st Ave West. Please note that the start time will be at 6:30 instead of 7 so be sure to come earlier.
We had planned to have Willy Waterton at the February meeting but due to the threat of freezing rain, we asked Willy if he could make it for March instead, and he graciously agreed. We will have our usual slideshow of the monthly assignment, which is Frozen for this month, and some other usual things to take care of, but then Willy will speak to the audience about photography.
Willy is a local photojournalist from Kemble and was a staff photographer for the Owen Sound Sun Times for many years. He’s been as far as Antarctica in his travels and his years of experience has produced fantastic imagery. You can see many of his photos from around the Grey Bruce area on his Instagram feed at http://www.instagram.com/willywaterton.
OSCC member Allison Arnold has some photos of Newfoundland on display at the Artist’s Co-op located at 942 2nd Avenue East in downtown Owen Sound. The photos will be showing throughout the month of February.
If you would like to contact Allison about her images, please use the contact form below.
Our friends at the Saugeen Shores Camera Club are pleased to present an evening with photographer Don Komarechka. Don’s presentation called “Vision Beyond Seeing” will be held at the Bruce County Museum on Thursday, April 20, 2017 at 7:30.
A week ago, Saturday, Jan. 21st, the OSCC hosted a “Learning By Doing” workshop with an emphasis of computer editing software. Members brought in their laptops, photos to edit, and picked each others brains on a variety of topics – software packages, photo organization, specific editing techniques, and much more.
One-on-one, peer-to-peer instruction at it’s best! Photo by Rob Cotton
A big thanks to all the participants and the organizers for make it a success. A special thanks to Juergen for being the driving force behind the event, and also for bringing power for our computers (by way of his extension cord collection) and power for the participants (by way of his chocolate collection).
Julian demonstrating B & W conversion methods on his now famous manufactured pastoral scene. Photo by Greg McMillan.
Many topics were discussed and we’ve gathered a few of the resources that came up for your viewing pleasure below.
Lightroom
A demo of this popular software is available from Adobe. You will need to sign up for an Adobe ID (this is free). Denise has supplied a few of her favorite Lightroom resources:
An organizer with basic editing capabilities. An older version is freely available from Microsoft, and here’s a basic introduction to the software. The latest version was a part of the Windows Essentials 2012 suite, which is no longer available for download and is no longer supported.
There is a free digital photography course available on ALISON. It may be the same as this course by Dan Armendariz from the Harvard Extension School, which has video lessons available on YouTube (no sign up).
Members of the Bruce County Library system will have free access to Lynda.com, which boasts over 1700 instructional photography videos. You can sign in using your library credentials by following the link at the Library website.
