Highlands Ranch Photo Club Meeting of May 9, 2006
Richard Bruner welcomed everyone including a number of first-time attenders. Most heard about our meeting through signs in the library.
The library room is not available for June's meeting, so a field trip is planned. Anyone interested will meet at the Highlands Ranch Park and Ride lot across from the library at 6:30 p.m. on June 12. We will car pool to the Platte River for early evening shots.
Our July meeting will once again take place at the Highlands Ranch library.
Lee VanRamshorst is organizing weekly photo trips which members of our photo club are welcome to attend. Some are short and local, while others are excursions of several days.
The library would like a suggest for a book covering SLR digital photographing. Please contact the library if you have any ideas.
Featured Speaker: Wendy Turner on Creative Portraiture
Wendy Turner showed a number of her photos along with comments on how to shoot successful portraits. She does mainly commercial work with the symphony, ballet, musicians, dance companies and record labels.
Wendy starts by working at bringing out the personality of the subject. She likes to talk to them to gain rapport and trust before she even picks up the camera. She has found that being energetic will help the subject be more animated as well.
When the photographer thinks of himself or herself as a mirror, it helps to loosen up the subject. She likes to start by shooting some digital photos and then showing them right away to the subject to show them how beautiful they look.
When working with commercial shoots the photographer must also work with the public relations director, art director and others. It can be a challenge to work around everyone's ideas.
Wendy likes to capture someone fixing themselves -- adjusting their hair or clothing or scarf. Another favorite "catch" is when they are in-between one pose and another. By getting your subjects moving, they become more interesting. She gave the example of having a child sit on a large bouncy ball. She shoots at 250 or 500 speed to capture the movement.
She often uses a white reflector underneath to reflect back light and bring light to the face. She prefers one light source for lighting a person. She often uses one light with a softbox in one of several sizes. Sometimes she uses fill flash to light up the focal point.
Thinking of ideas or possible backgrounds is a good idea, but sometimes she comes up with totally surprising ideas after meeting and seeing the person.
Wendy likes pictures that show an "honest" face. Photos of people with their eyes closed can be very effective. A prop such as a musical instrument or a friend can help loosen up the subject as well. Emotion makes the best pictures -- catching someone off-guard and in the moment.
Motion in the body is great if it can become the one element in the shot. She likes to avoid distracting backgrounds. Getting people outside often makes them happy.
Group photos can be a big challenge to make interesting. A favorite trick is to shoot down from a high stairwell.
Wendy mentioned that she rarely uses a tripod. On a technical note, she shoots the largest .jpg format available for her camera and often turns the contrast down. She shoots in color, and often converts to black and white by using the desaturate command in her photo editing software rather than converting to greyscale.
The photos she used to illustrate her work were very inspiring and certainly gave us some new ideas to try. Thank you very much for your presentation!
Show and Tell from Club Members
Dave showed several photos with a different focal point. For example, one showed mountains and a windmill far away, then another focused on a closeup of the windmill and only part of the mountains. He commented that he is using a warming filter almost all the time.
Members were advised that a circular polarizer should be used for autofocus digital cameras.
Joe showed an interesting photo from the recent field trip to the Grand Sand Dunes National Park.
Nancy showed a portrait photo of her son in Marine uniform.
Rodrigo showed some interesting photos of a painter and mountains, wine and wineglass, and a fork with its shadow and a red marble. He also brought a book of his own photos and explained how you could send in your photos to have them put into book form.
Joyce brought two versions of a photo showing a young boy and asked members to indicate which cropping was more effective.
Charles showed photos with trees and flowers which he had manipulated to make them more "painterly."
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