Benefits of Belonging to a Photographic Club
Derek Smith • 15 August 2023
Being a hobbyist photographer can often be a very solitary pastime, getting out to various locations taking the photographs, and developing the skills needed to master your camera, and the art of seeing an image will all take time before you become proficient in your hobby. When you’ve taken the very best images of your chosen subject that you possibly can, what do you do with those images? Do you share them on social media, with friends, or relatives? Or are the images just sitting on your computer?
Belonging to a photographic club is one of the best ways to quickly become proficient in your chosen hobby, it is a place where you can share ideas, and have valuable critique on your images. Learning composition techniques, sharing camera settings, and being involved in a group outing or workshop can all help develop your skills. I well remember one of our members, who is a very competent landscape, and street photographer, coming along to one of our outings to the Cadwell Circuit and never having photographed racing motorcycles before, took one of the best images from the whole afternoon. At one of our studio portrait sessions, many of those members who attended commented on how much they had not only enjoyed portraiture, but also learned a lot in the process.
Competitions held within the club also develop skills, and motivation. I find that it motivates me to get out with my camera and take the photos that I normally wouldn’t even consider taking, it gives me a subject to go and seek out. One of the topics for a future competition is “Chimneys”, and this within a 25 mile radius of Louth, now I would never normally consider taking a photo of a chimney, but I must go, seek them out, and produce the images for that competition. One aspect of competitions that sometimes causes issues is that a judge’s opinion of a photograph is subjective, often a judge will give full marks for a photograph, but the same photograph placed before another judge will receive low marks: nothing against the photographer, or the photograph, just simply a difference of opinion. Overall, the benefits of entering competitions far outweigh the drawbacks, the judge’s critique is usually very helpful, and feedback from your peers when reviewing a photograph is useful.
The social aspect of being in a photographic club can never be underestimated, the weekly meetings, the summer outings, the annual dinner, and the Christmas buffet all engender a feeling of belonging.
I am immensely proud to belong to the Louth Photographic Society, we are a diverse mix of men, and women, with different skills, and attributes, a friendly, welcoming, bunch, sharing ideas, and suggestions, where needed.
Now for some very welcome news, over the last few months our club has been involved in a friendly interclub “Battles” competition. Each Lincolnshire club has to select 15 photographic prints by their members to be judged against 15 photographic prints from each of two other clubs in the same meeting, the points derived from the various rounds at different club venues are collated, and the highest scoring clubs go forward to the final “Battle” to be held at Nettleham Village Hall on Sunday 15th October, the judge will be Malcolm Sales QEP, ABIPP, ARPS. Four clubs will participate in the final “Battle”, Deepings, Grimsby, Pinchbeck, and Louth, yes, we’re in the final!
Finally, if you’ve managed to stay alert during all my ramblings, the answers to the quiz that I set you on my last post.
A – Rachel, taken with a full frame Sony A7ii, and Sony 85mm f/1.8 lens
B – Amy, taken with an APS-C Fuji X-S20, and Fuji XF 50mm f/2 lens
C – Fleur, taken with a micro four thirds Olympus OM-D E-M5iii, and Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens
If you didn’t get any of those right you would not be alone, whether your camera costs £200, or £2000 the gear does not matter that much, the skill of the photographer matters far more.
Louth Photographic Society
The Exhibition will be in place from 10th - 29th September 2026
I was scrolling through the archives yesterday, and found these "Still Life" images. Still Life is an interesting photographic genre that requires good lighting, and compositional skills, but the results can be amazing. Here are four images of the genre, "Breakfast" showing cereal falling into a bowl, "Four Candles" (no not the ones from the Two Ronnies sketch), the moody "Decaying Tulip", and the simple but effective monochrome "Opener". Perhaps these images might give you some inspiration.
I joined the NELPS outing at Chambers Farm Woods on Wednesday. The NELPS visit to Chamber Farm wood and butterfly garden was well attended, with several members from NELPS, Grimsby, Dunholme and Louth, kind thanks to all that came, although it was very hot the butterfly garden, being rather full and slightly unkept did not let us down with butterflies, two less common were seen, a Comma butterfly and a humming bird moth, with loads of very lively common blue butterflies. Most of the insects in the butterfly garden were highly active, and by the time an insect was spotted, it was off!! I managed to just about get an image of the Comma butterfly, and nobody stood a chance with the humming bird moth, it was too fast. The dragonfly was more accommodating remaining fairly still posing for us. The next NELPS outing will be to the Peoples Park in Grimsby on Wednesday 19th, I'm busy on that day, but I will be attending the meeting at the Sandtoft Trolleybus Museum on Wednesday 26th. Many thanks to NELPS for organising these outings, it was a thoroughly pleasurable morning.
A visit to Whitby for a sunset picture didn't quite go to plan. Unknown to me today is the last day of the Whitby Regatta. Whitby in the summer is usually busy, but today it rivaled Time Square in New York. My planned shoot of the East Pier was a non-starter because for tonight only there's a fun fair along West Pier where I planned to shoot from. I had to re-think and resort to plan b, which was also a non-starter because the East Pier was closed as it was packed with fireworks. Plan c was OK though and I got an image I'm pleased with.
I've been up to RSPB Bempton Cliffs this week, and have taken some excellent photographs, the weather was fine, and the lighting was less harsh than usual. This pair were on the cliff top, obviously well established, and saw off this interloper trying to muscle in on their space, those beaks look very vicious. I hope that everyone else is having a productive summer break.
For club interaction, we are invited to these NELPS photo shoots. So lets start this club interaction, NELPS are now on there summer break, but it does not stop there. The NELPS club president has put together some outdoor photo shoots:- Lincoln 5th Aug meet at the Cathedral 11am Not forgetting the photo exhibition by Lincoln Camera Club in the Usher Gallery! Chambers Farm Wood & Butterfly Farm 12th Aug meet at 10am. Peoples Park Grimsby 19th Aug meet at 10am. Trolley Bus Museum Sandtoft 26th Aug meet at 10am Cadwell Park 10th Aug motorbikes, 24th Aug cars and both are track days so free to get in.
Sutton & Trusthorpe Camera Club have their annual Exhibition at the Meridale Hall, Sutton on Sea, on 29th / 30th August. Drink and a Home-made cake only £3!
I’ve lost my photographic “mojo”, that desire to go out and take impactful photographs. That creative spark has gone, vanished, will it ever return? Writers talk of a “writers block”, when they just sit in front of a blank page, and can’t think of anything else to write, I’m the same, still out with my camera, but just not creating anything meaningful. Some of this I suppose is due to the fact that I’ve almost stopped my genre of model photography, we had the Studio evening, and other than that I’ve only had 2 model shoots this year. So what is my photography genre now? I know that I’m not a bird photographer, I haven’t got the patience to sit in a bird hide for hours with a long lens, waiting for the right bird shot to appear. Landscape, possibly, but I look at the work of some of our members, and YouTube videos, and don’t know whether I can achieve as good a standard in my work? I do enjoy macro photography, but again do my photos reach a good standard? One way forward is to look at our Societies annual project, this year it’s “water” one photo a month depicting water. Then of course there are the planned photo competitions for the rest of the year, those subjects could inspire me to go out and take some images. Anyway, that’s me, enjoy the rest of the summer, and if any of our members could share a photo, with a line or two of text I will be very happy to post on this blog.
Good Morning All Last week we had a very good evening at Kirkby Gravel Pits, it was a warm sunny evening and there was wildlife about to photograph. There were Dragonflies about, but all flying, but we did manage to photograph some Damselflies and grasshoppers etc. We then called at the local pub in Kirkby on Bain for refreshments. There were only 7 of us, if you have other ideas for outings please let me know and I will look into them for next year. Derek has also done a blog on the evening. Louth did make it through to the LPA Battle finals coming fifth overall, the final is on the 18 th October at Nettleham village hall. That was the last event before the summer break, so we now have a break before returning in September. I won't be doing any newsletters unless there is something to report. If you do anything interesting over the break you can always send Derek a blog for our website. There are things you can do over the break, the monthly project of water, preparing for the PDI competition in September, with the categories of "Objects in the Air" and "Open". In September our first meeting back will have members speaking on the topic "15 minutes on what you have done over the summer", you may want to prepare something for this. Have a good summer, Graham
Lincoln Camera Club are holding an exhibition at the Usher Gallery, Lincoln. Commencing July 30th to November 1st.
