2021 Exhibition

This year we were able to hold a photographic exhibition in a local library.  We had about sixty entries from our club members.  Each member could submit six images and up to three would be chosen to be shown in our exhibition.   Three of my images were selected for exhibition. 

This image was one I entered into our black and white competition at the beginning of the year.

I had set out some shells on the glass table top of our coffee table and I was really inspired by the reflections that I saw in the glass.  I had all sorts of shells initially but decided I liked the simple colour palate and repeating colour and texture of this image.

As you might have noticed over the years I have taken many photos with an orange and blue theme. 

Portfolio Competition 2021

Our portfolio competition is a competition that is supposed to show our versatility as a photographer while if possible having a theme that runs through the images.  One of the other requirements is that these photos are supposed to have been taken within the last 12 months.  

 I did not actually see that there was a sort of geometric theme running through these images until after I had finished them and turned them in.  

  I spent an afternoon photographing these images on our coffee table in the living room  Not any special lighting, just using light from our window and a reflector. I wanted to do something abstract with these images.  Each piece is a macro image of the inside of a Paua shell.

  A dear friend of mine is a quilter and after spending some time looking at her quilts, I was inspired to use these images in a quilt design.  I love the bright colours and textures that can be found when you look closely at these shells.

I love the expression that can be captured with photography.  I spent about ten minutes talking to my model asking her questions and waiting for her responses. She has such a lovely expressive face. My intention was to just use a single image but realized as I lined up these faces together in my editing program that there was much more to her than just one expression.  It was such a fun experience and I hope to do more of these expression experiments in the future.

This image was quite a challenge for me.  I set up for it three times and then took it all down unable to

"make it work".  Then, as I was running out of time, I walked out to our mandarin tree and picked a mandarin and started peeling it.  I was looking at the translucent quality of each segment of the fruit.

 I decided I was going to make it work this time and rushed out to my garage, set all of these pieces into place and snapped the image. 

 I was pleased to receive the trophy for the best digital set for these images.

Feel free to click on each image to enlarge them.  

Low light

 The brief for out lowlight competition was not complicated.  Take a photo with a long exposure time.  I realized I had not taken any long exposure photos in a few years. I found some I had taken about 5 years ago.  

The first is of a tunnel that we drove through on a visit to my friend in Hawaii.  The second of a firework display I took while photographing a friends birthday party.

I love the warm tones of these images. I also love that you can see the camera movement in these images.  It was so much fun to experiment with both of these images.  Feel free to click on the images to see them larger.

Natural History

 This year for our natural history competition I entered this image of a squirrel.  I love this image and think it has so much personality.  It was taken at the height of summer in Texas so it was around 102 degrees F (or 39 degrees C).  We were taking a walk and I saw him laying there on the ground looking just as hot as I felt.  

Photojournalism

This year in our photojournalism competition, I entered two images that I had taken years ago.

One of my nephew when he was probably about 4 or 5 years old and one of a dear friend that I got to know in Tanzania.  The idea of this competition was to make sure each image told a story or made you want to know more of what was happening in the image.  

The image of the young woman holding the donkey skull in the desert won the top digital photojournalism image.   

We had driven out to the desert to find some filming locations for the coming week and my friend wandered off. When she returned she was holding this skull and was looking into the setting sun.