Mallow Camera Club

Denis Whelehan and Tony McDonnell of Dundalk Photographic Society will be making the trip to Mallow to show their award winning images.  Both are experienced photographers and well known in Irish photographic circles.

To see some of Denis and Tony’s images check out their galleries on the Dundalk P S website.

Brian Hopper and Ciaran DeBhal from Dundalk Photographic Society paid a very successful visit to Mallow Camera Club on Friday night last, 07 November.  Brian and Ciaran made the long journey from Dundalk to present their superb images to keen photographers from Mallow and surrounding clubs.  The audience were regaled with stories of their photographic exploits.  Both photographers have travelled extensively and they shoot a wide range of subject matter.

There was good banter between the speakers and the audience, and the quality of the images and the commitment of both photographes to their art came through on the night.  A good night was had by all.

Ciaran DeBhal, John Hooton, Paddy Fennessy, Bríd Coakley, and Brian Hopper

Mallow Camera Club are proud to announce that members of Dundalk Photographic Society will be visiting Mallow to exhibit their work.  Dundalk Photographic Society has been very successful over the years with many of their members winning awards in competitions in Ireland and abroad.

Brian Hopper and Ciaran DeBhal will show their work which has helped Dundalk P S to become one of the most successful clubs in Ireland.  Visit www.dundalkphoto.com to see examples of Brain and Ciaran’s work.

The meeting will take place at 8pm sharp on Friday 7th November at the new Mallow GAA complex and is open to all.  Members of other clubs are welcome to attend.

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.

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 Thursday 28 April Mallow Camera Club hosted a talk by renowned Scottish photographer Roy Robertson who was on a short lecture tour of Ireland. Roy, who is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, showed some of his landscape and dance photographs and talked about his photographic technique. Roy works almost exclusively in black and white, using Ilford XP2 film, from which he makes his own prints in the darkroom. The audience included camera club members from various clubs in the region as well as an excellent turnout from local members. A cup of tea rounded off an excellent night.

Roy presents a signed copy of one of his landscape photographs to John Hogan and Bríd Coakley for the Mallow Camera Club collection.

On Monday night 16 April we were delighted to welcome members of Dungarvan Camera Club who shared some great photographs with us.  Photographs covering such diverse subjects as Portraits, Landscapes, Macro/Close-Up, Wedding, Travel and Night Photography were among the images shown.  A cup of tea and a chat rounded off a great evening.  Thanks to the members of Dungarvan CC who made the trek to Mallow.  We’re looking forward to the return trip.

Members of Dungarvan Camera Club show their photos – more lovely images can be seen on their website www.dungarvancameraclub.com

Mallow Camera Club is delighted to host an evening with renowned Scottish photographer Roy Robertson on Thursday 26 April 2007 at 8:30 pm.  Roy is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and has been active in photography for many years.  His photographic interests include Landscapes, Townscapes, and B+W Photography.  Roy tends to work on themes and his photographs have been exhibited widely, including in Europe and America.  He currently has an exhibition ‘Traditions‘ running in Dundee. 

Roy is a regular speaker at camera clubs in the UK.  Mallow will be his only speaking engagement in the SACC region during his short trip to Ireland.  His talk should not be missed.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT TAKES PLACE ON THURSDAY NIGHT

In just over an hour the Moon will become dimmer and almost red in colour as the Earth moves between it and the Sun. I’ll be outside with my camera but first I did some research on photographing the moon and wrote a post about it on my blog.

If you’re out tonight with your camera, put it on a tripod (and use a remote release if you have one, or the camera timer if not), shoot in manual mode, open the aperture as wide as it’ll go and starting with an exposure of about 1/125sec bracket your shots with faster and slower exposures.

The eclipse is due to begin at 10:44pm, it’s getting foggy here in Blarney unfortunately. Hopefully you’ll have clearer skies in Mallow!