Much Mirth In March

A Spot Of Bother.

Monday night meeting of the Caterpillar Photographic Society was slightly delayed due to the room in the venue being occupied by wine-tasters. That’s not rhyming slang for anything before you think ill of me.

We met eventually in the Armoury and commandeered a large table so that we could al learn a little about some of the tools available in Photoshop. We touched on Clone Stamp, Spot Healing, Spot Healing Brushes and Patch tools as well as different types of selection lassos and finally a little about layers.

The screen was a bit small as we hadn’t got the projector up and running but I think that the members of the group got the basic gist of what was going on. If there are any questions, come and hassle me at lunch time during the day or in an evening. If I can help you in any way I’ll certainly do my best.

There’s plenty of resources out there on the web for all of the topics we touched upon tonight so have a scan around and see what you can find. Here’s a spot and blemish removal one.

Troubled Waters

The discussion turned from this to the next topic for the month of March. Topics suggested included Star-Trails, Self Portrait, logo, shadow, food,old, and water. The one that we settled upon by using the Ben’s Random Number Generator was “Bridge”.

This isn’t too prescriptive for us all this month. It could be a picture of a bridge, or some folks playing bridge (the card game), the bridge of someone’s huge conk etc. Use your imagination and come up with a winner. Most of all though, just have fun doing it. The category will close ahead of the next meeting of CatPS.

At the end of tonight’s meeting however, we talked about a field trip to do star trails. At least five members would like to do this and have a play to see how to do it. I’m definitely up for it and we’re trying to think of good locations at present. Tonight we talked about a few places, Stiperstones, Moreton Corbett Castle, Acton Burnell Castle, Clee Hill and the Radio Telescope at Knockin. If any of you guys has any other ideas of an interesting foreground for a picture shout em up. We’ll plan to do it one night but it’ll be a bit go/no-go depending on the cloud cover. Should be a bit of a laugh though.

Flax Field Trip

There’s been a field trip this weekend also to the Flaxmill Maltings which four Cat Employees were invited to be a part of the Visual Recording sessions. This is to capture the changes throughout the renovation work. We got into some good areas this time with the highest point by “the Crown” being open to us along with the roof that’s covered over to protect it.

The silo building was open also but we didn’t get in there as it was too late by the time we’d finished on the roof and doing some light painting in the darkest room that was open to us. Maybe next time.

Dave’s in Prison

While out on this field trip one of the members, Dave, had an idea of visiting the Shrewsbury prison to document the condition and help preserve some of the memories of this soon to be altered set of buildings. It would be a fascinating place to go, certainly for those members of the CatPS that haven’t been in there for a while. I’m chasing that up as we speak!!

The Lighter way to enjoy photography

There was some excellent entries in  the light painting category and it was great to see a variation on ideas and some real creativity going into it! Also the fact that you had to go out and do it when you could have been sat in front of the idiot box. Well done to all entrants, you’re all winners because you overcame your individual challenges to come up with a great photo.

Don’t forget to get your votes in on the Light Painting category by Wednesday midnight.