Mallow Camera Club

Theme:  TODAY’S IRELAND

The Irish Examiner has teamed up with Ford to give amateur photographers the chance to win a new model Ford Mondeo Ghia.
There are also prizes for under 12 years of age category, and 12 to 18 years of age category.

Simply take a photo of anywhere, anything or anyone that you think captures the theme -
‘Today’s Ireland – its people, culture, landscape, or architecture’

How To Enter: Send your digital photo along with a caption explaining your photo (less than 30 words) to fordphotocompetition@examiner.ie or post your entry to: Ford Photo Competition, Irish Examiner, City Quarter, Lapps Quay, Cork.Closing Date: Friday, March 7th, 2008

THE PRIZE:  2008 Ford Mondeo Ghia With greater levels of quality, style and equipment, the new Ford Mondeo redefines standards in its class. Its crisp exterior lines are now accentuated by deep new bumpers, elegant front grille and dynamic alloy wheels. Inside, premium materials and textures emphasise refined craftsmanship and elegance.
Under 18 Prize Categories: Winners in the under 12 years of age category and 12 to 18 years of age category will both win a top of the range digital camera and printing system.
Closing Date: Friday March 7th, 2008
The Results: A special Irish Examiner feature on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, will announce the winner and show a selection of the best photos submitted.
The competition is open to amateur photographers only. For a full list of terms and conditions see the Irish Examiner newspaper.

Note:  The inclusion of details of any photographic competition on this website should not be taken to imply that Mallow Camera Club supports that competition.
At the time of writing MCC has not seen the full terms and conditions of entry for this competition.  It is up to each entrant to satisfy himself/herself that the terms and conditions of entry are acceptable to him/her.

Mallow Camera Club members Denise O’Connor and Seán O’Riordan travelled to South Africa last November to work with the Niall Mellon Township Trust. Both worked extremely hard but managed to take some photographs to document their experiences on the trip. They presented their shots to Mallow CC on Monday night last, 18th February, which generated a lot of debate and interest in the project.

Seán has produced photobooks of his images and supplied photographs to the trust for use in publicity, Christmas cards etc.

Niall Mellon is travelling to New York this weekend to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu. During their meeting Niall will present the Archbishop with one of Seán’s photographs (above) overprinted with the pledge to build 7,000 homes in 2008.

Congratulation and well done to Seán.

Click for more information on the Niall Mellon Township trust.

Seán is travelling to South Africa again later this year. If you want to sponsor him he can be contacted at 086 2579830 or via email at sean@NOSPAMrota.ie (remove “NOSPAM” to email him).

All photographs in Mallow Camera Club’s Annual Exhibition held last September were donated by members for sale in aid of the Niall Mellon Trust, raising over €3,000 – Approximately the cost of building one house.

Mallow Camera Club are delighted to announce that Gerrit Groshart will give a talk to the club on Monday 10th March.

Gerrit hails from the Netherlands, has an EFIAP distinction, and is a renowned nature photographer.

He will be in Ireland for a short visit which includes judging the IPF Nature Competition in Dublin Zoo on 9th March.  He will be giving talks to a number of clubs, mainly on the east coast.  This is the only talk Gerrit will be giving in the south of the country.

As usual MCC are inviting members of other clubs to join us on the night.

It has been another great weekend for the club.  Following on from the recent successes in the SACC Nature Competitons, the club and club members have scored more wins over the last few days.

On Saturday club members travelled to Dublin to participate in the IPF National Print and Projected Image competition.  Veteran club member John Hooton won a Gold Medal for his slide ‘Fallen  Water’ in the Projected Image section. 

The following day, Sunday 10 February, the club travelled to Castleconnell, Co. Limerick to participate in the SACC Annual Exhibition & Competition.  The club took the overall prize for best club in the competion.  They also won trophies for best colour panel and best slide panel. Bríd Coakley and John Hooton both picked up first prizes for best colour print and best slide respectively.

The club now qualifies for the IPF National Photography Finals which will be held in Thurles in April.

Well done to all.

Summary notes and links for my talk last night. I’ll expand a little on this as I find time over the next day or so.

Get the GIMP from gimp.org. It’s a free download. The Windows version weighs in at around 16MB, but it also runs on Mac OS X and Linux. (On Mac OS X you’ll have to install the X11 package too)

Essential GIMP tools for photographers:

1. Curves
2. Levels
3. Crop
4. Resize
5. Unsharp Mark

Layers are a very important part of the post processing experience. Learn to use them along with layer masks and modes.

A handy way of creating a polarizer effect on a blue sky is by creating a new transparent layer, set the mode to overlay, and then select the gradient tool. Make sure it’s set to FG->transparent and the foreground colour is black. Draw from the top of your image. Hey Presto!

Dodge/Burn functions do exactly what they do in the darkroom. They brighten and darken areas of the image you apply them to. Remember to apply gently, not like I did last night!

2008-02-11 Update – GIMP For Photographers: Levels covers the basics of using the levels tool!

On Sunday the 27th January the 2008 SACC Nature Photography Competition was hosted by Limerick & District Camera Club. The competition was judged in two categories, Flora and a Fauna. Entries consitsted of colour prints and slides from members of SACC clubs.
Colman Culhane was successful in two categories. Coleman won best slide the Flora section with a lovely fungi image. He also picked up a silver medal in the colour print section of the flora category.

New members Jeremy Kingston & Paddy Feen both picked up silver medals in the slide section of the flora and fauna respectively.
Well done to all who participated.

The next club open competition is the IPF National Print and Projected Image to be held in Dublin on the 9th of February. On Sunday 10th February the SACC Annual Competition & Exhibition will be hosted by Limerick Camera Club. This is a qualifying round for the national photographic finals which will be held in April 2008.