Kiama-Shellharbour Camera Club

Len Brown will be visiting our club again on the 6th of July to give us a talk on Freestyle Photography. This sounds like a very interesting presentation, and will certainly be a little ‘outside the box’ as far as camera club presentations normally go.

Freestyle Photography Definition: This style is an extension of conventional photography into creative art. Its purpose is to stimulate creative thoughts and encourage experimentation with new ideas going beyond a simple photograph. There should be a significant photographic content, and inclusion of mixed media of any kind (photocopy, paint, transfer, digital etc) is welcome. It can be 2 or 3 dimensional. It can be a collage or a montage. Freestyle should go beyond the so-called “Experimental” techniques.

(definition from the Northside Creative Photography National Freestyle Competition entry form)

One of the major aims of Northside Creative Photography is to foster and to encourage the development of Freestyle Photography. You can read more about it at their web site.

Dee Kramer is a local photographer specialising in panoramic images. He has just opened his new gallery, situated at the base of Macquarie Pass National Park, where you can see many of his stunning local panoramas hanging on the walls. As well as the gallery, Dee displays and sells his prints at local and Sydney markets (upcoming market dates are displayed on his web site).

Visit the site at DeeKramer.com and let us know what you think.

Our Annual General Meeting will take place before the Open Competition on June 15, so please be on time. This will be the last competition for this year’s point score, so get your best prints ready!

Barry Daniel presented a very informative talk tonight on the topic of “Macro and Close-Up Photography”. Barry is one of our club’s life members, and has been doing macro photography for 50 years, so he talks from experience!

Everyone who knows Barry knows that he shoots with Nikon gear, but did you know that he started out using a Pentax camera? He started shooting macro with an old 50mm Pentax macro lens, complete with fungus, and entered one of his shots into a Nikon-sponsored competition. Barry won a brand new Nikon 50mm macro lens! He figured the new lens was worth switching systems for, so he sold the Pentax gear and bought into Nikon, and hasn’t looked back since!

One of the good tips Barry gave us was to use a standard setup for your macro work. Use the same camera/lens/flash combination, and experiment to work out what camera settings, flash settings and subject distance give the best results. You will then be able to quickly set up and shoot good macro shots when they present themselves, without having to worry about whether the exposure is correct and whether the shot will turn out.

Thanks for taking the time to prepare and present such a great talk, Barry!