I've had a free weekend (a real rarity of late), so Pam and I decided to visit one of our favourite features near Barton upon Humber. After calling in at the Nature Reserve at 'Far Ings', we went to 'The Ropery Cafe, Studios and Exhibition Space' Building at the Northern side of Barton upon Humber. It had been a while since we had visited (my last time encountering an approaching Thunderstorm over the Humber Bridge), so I was keen to see if there were any changes. The tide was out, exposing the mudflats and, as we travelled within the Boatyard complex, there was ample opportunity for some images. Despite being very cold on the exposed areas of the South Bank, it was extremely bright in the Autumnal light looking North, so harsh shadows were evident, and contrast levels were high. Looking at the scene I envisaged some Black and White imagery, knowing the powerful Serif Affinity Program has great tools to support B&W management. With a rich blue sky and minimal cloud, I retrieved an old circular polariser filter and used it to just overlap and cover the top RH corner of the scene over the lens, as seen through the viewfinder. It is noticeable that the sunlight is coming from the left, but I quite like the transition from light to dark in the sky from left to right in image 1. A particular personal default setting in the Affinity B&W gave a good starting point and with just a tiny lift on the shadows, I think the picture was worth recording. Image 2 had no polariser usage, but again I used the Affinity function to produce a darker, perhaps sombre record. My current favour in B&W is leaning towards rich blacks and an overall darker, more defined shift - perhaps not to everyone's taste, but tonal management also gives detail capture within the RH side of the histogram.

Good morning All Last weekend while we were in Yorkshire I walked into the local church, there had been an harvest festival recently and there was a flower arrangement left near the front of the church. These types of photographs require quite a bit of thinking about to get good depth of field, retain the colour in the stained glass and reduce burn out due to bright light. I think I managed it after a few failed attempts and it is all one image. Last week at the club we held a local and open competition, Chris Birchmore judged the local mobile phone and compact subject and I judged the open. We both judged as we saw the images for the first time and scored as we critiqued the images. Quite a task especially as they are all our members images but I think we both did a pretty good job, there is a report on our blog with more information. This week, Wednesday 9th October, Grahame Dunkin from Dunholme is our speaker with his presentation "Wales Three Years in the Making". Graham is an excellent photographer so it should be a night you won’t want to miss. Dave Turner will be collecting prints for the following weeks print competition, so if you can email Dave your titles and bring your prints next Wednesday night please. Our Society is also going to enter the LPA club PDI competition, can you send a few of your very best PDI’s to Harry please for selection, we will also look at monthly competition winners as well. Regards Graham

Every year our Society commences a new project, last year our project subject was “churches”, the idea is that members produce one photo per month on the subject and show the project in a meeting at the beginning of each new year. This year our subject is “numbers” and it will be interesting to see how creative members can be with this project. The whole rationale behind the project thinking is to develop members skills by taking them out of their comfort zones, challenging, and motivating members by moving them away from their usual genres and styles of photography. My suggestion for next year’s project would be “Prime Time”, the idea being that a photographer chooses one particular focal length prime lens and creates one photo a month with this prime lens and see how creative the images can be. If you don’t have a prime lens why not think about getting one, there are currently many inexpensive Chinese manufacturers lenses in the marketplace, TT Artisans, 7 Artisans, Mieke, Samyang, and Viltrox are some of these companies producing manual focus, and auto focus lenses for many camera mounts. Additionally, there are M42 screw thread vintage manual focus lenses that can often be found for a few pounds, but you will need a M42 adapter for your camera. For my Fuji system, I own the 12mm f/2 Samyang (18mm equivalent) 27mm f/2.8 TT Artisans (40mm equivalent), the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 (45mm equivalent), and the TT Artisans 56mm f/1.8 (85mm equivalent) prime lenses. For a project such as this I would probably choose one of the extremes of my primes, as the 40 / 50mm full frame focal length would be too easy, so the 12mm, or the 56mm then, very tempted by the 56mm lens as I usually use this solely for my portraits. What prime lenses do you own? What focal length could you use for a project such as this? Next years project will be chosen at the committee meeting on the 27th November, and ideas for the next project would be welcome. Shown here are a set of images taken with my TT Artisans 27mm pancake lens.

Our “Local” PDI competition was held last night, these were images taken within a 25 mile radius of Louth, and members were further constrained by limiting the images to be taken only with a compact camera, or mobile phone. The resulting images showed the creative side of our member photographers, with some stunning images being produced and submitted into the competition, the judge for this category was Chris Birchmore who skillfully critiqued the images, provided feedback, and scored accordingly. After the break Graham Harrison stepped up to judge the “Open” category, always a difficult category to judge because of the variance in genres within the submitted images. The monochrome images submitted were of an extremely high standard, as can be seen from the deservedly first placed “Cromer Pier”, and the third placed “Behold and Angel”. I enjoyed the unique monochrome images “Foggy Day for Dip”, and landscape “Storm Approaching, Cairngorms”, of equal merit were the atmospheric colourful reflection images from Fountains Abbey. The first placed images from each category are shown here, Scrivelsby Church taken on an iPhone SE by Derek Smith, and Cromer Pier taken with a Nikon D810 by Dave Turner. The Louth website competition has been updated with the top three placements in each category, and full results. A big thank you to our judges Chris Birchmore, Graham Harrison, and to Dave Mann for provision of the refreshments.

A check of the laws of Copyright will show that generally, the individual who pressed the shutter owns the image. From that, we could probably surmise that when you're out and about with your camera and firing off images, the resulting pictures you produce (including any post production), belong to you; yes, you took it, it's yours. Years ago, I came across a lovely location (as shown), and I wanted to capture it; I firstly walked round the location, found my viewpoint, set my tripod up and mounted the camera. I then selected my focal length, composed the scene and put the camera in Aperture Priority mode for what I envisaged. I used single shot function with manual focus point selected. Knowing the subject was not moving, I could set the ISO low and let the shutter speed sort itself. Post capture, I checked the histogram and was pleased with the scope of the dynamic range. In sum, I was happy that I had taken the image, with the camera working as a tool controlled by me. Conversely, a few months ago I was at Cadwell Park, with the camera in machine gun mode at 12fps, Auto-Tracking Lock with high sensitivity, Artificial Intelligent Servo, the camera was set to give panning speed with Auto ISO. The focal length allowed me to crop unwanted parts later. I knew that all the automation and capability of the camera would get some keepers from every rider, on each pass at 12fps. The camera automation and efficiency produced the goods. Now, my point is, 'who, or what took that image?' was it me via knowing the setup to be used, or the inbuilt algorithms and processing power of the camera? I know if I had been sent out 50+yrs ago with a 'thumb + wind-on film spool Camera' I couldn't manage to get anything like the shots returned. Cast your mind back to the days of the Olympics, where Photographers nailed the focus and got the shot of a Triple Jumper mid-stride, or the head-on shot of a Long-Jumper in the air coming directly at them over the sand, or the High-Diver just at the point of contact with the water...Now they certainly took the picture! (Henri Cartier-Bresson, 'The Decisive Moment'). There is a vast range of functionality that can be called upon when using our high tech black boxes, especially when in the auto modes for confidence, (now even images being taken for the buffer before the shutter is released, or in-built ND Grad Filtration) - but, for me, it shouldn't override the knowledge base required to slow down and get back to basics with a good understanding of where and when to use it. I sense this point could expand to see what Camera Makers can put in their Cameras next via AI. I get much more pleasure when I know that I set things up and came away with something I took.

Good Evening All Before you all think I am getting forgetful now I am 60 we were out all today and quite late back from the North York’s Moors Railway Gala day with eleven trains running over the four days. There were also visiting trains Omaha, Pitchford Hall and Eddystone. We took the train from Pickering to Grosmont at the end of their line and worked our way back. There was a freight train running just to photograph but unfortunately it broke down causing a bit of chaos on the line, we were stuck at Levisham station for quite a while until plans were in place to get trains running again as people needed to get back to the station they left their cars. Last week at the club you watched the NEMPF DVD, I missed the night but it usually is a night of very high standard photography. For members who have entered this years NEMPF exhibition could you bring your money in this week if possible. This week, Wednesday 2nd October, at the club we are holding a Local competition, Local photos taken on a phone or compact camera judged by Chris Birchmore and Open judged by myself. The deadline for entries is midnight tonight. Regards Graham

At our meeting last the N&EMPF Exhibition PDI DVD was shown, this disc is in two parts with the accepted images into the Exhibition in the first part, and after the break the awarded images were shown in the second part. It was interesting that 60% of submitted images into the Exhibition are accepted, so members do stand a chance of an acceptance as Harry Kerman with his "Dahlia" image, and Dave Turner with his "Approaching Storm" have shown. There was a high proportion of sports images, track events from Loughborough University, some dramatic watersports images possibly some of the canoe / kayak were taken at the National Water Sports Centre, Nottingham. The wildlife images shown were simply stunning, various birds of prey, kingfishers, dippers, as well as more commonly seen birds, the swan image by a young photographer was singled out for an award, as the exposure and composition were handled exceptionally well. Fewer landscapes were accepted into the Exhibition this year, however there were several beautiful portraits being shown. When viewing the Exhibition disc do you think "I don't stand a chance of an acceptance?", or, "I'm encouraged to improve my photography, and enter next year?". Personally I was encouraged to improve my skills in portraiture, do more studio work, and improve the lighting on my models.

Richard Hildred is an accomplished photographer, and is a member of the Louth Photographic Society. Why not pop along, and see some of his work?

Good Evening All, It seems I was right after some of our summer outings to nature reserves this year that there seemed to be a lack of butterflies, apparently and worryingly numbers were down statistically by50% this year. Last week at the club we held a PDI (Projected Digital Image) competition, with the categories of "Panoramic Landscapes" and "Open" judged by Bob Mould. It was a very good evening with some very high standard photography on show. All the results and a blog on the evening are on our website but very well done to Paul Gray for his panoramic evening photograph of Bridge to Tromso which won the subject, and Derek Smith who won the open section with his lollipop girl portrayal. This week, Wednesday 25th September, I won't be there but I have left the N&EMPF DVD featuring the 2024 N&EMPF exhibition of PDI’s, these images are of a very high standard and show the best photography from Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, some of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, you may spot some of our members photographs in the exhibition. Regards Graham