We did it! We hosted one of the top photographers in the world and created an opportunity for some 240 photo enthusiasts to add to their photographic knowledge. Our Freeman Patterson event on January 22 was a huge success. Enormous thanks goes to our steering committee for their dedication and commitment and to all LCC members for their support.

We can also celebrate our club's success with the recent CAPA competition, Altered Reality. Check out the images inside from our members that vaulted us to the #2 position in this competition. Way to go, Langley!

And now, as a club, we turn our attention to coming competitions and of course, the Fraser Valley Invitational. The committee is hard at work getting everything in place. What about you … have you got your best shot of Night yet?

With congratulations to all of us,

Dennis

Photographers Learn from a Master

By Natasha Jones, Langley Times, February 3, 2011

In a few short hours on Jan. 22, Freeman Patterson took 240 photography enthusiasts to a place where they could dream. Langley Fine Arts School's Chief Sepass Theatre was packed with people who came to learn from one of Canada's foremost photographers in a workshop organized by the Langley Camera Club.

In between images of exquisite artistry, Patterson gave a great deal of insight into his profession, sharing tricks of the trade and imparting hints to create an image that is as perfect as a photographer can make from the point of view of perspective, texture, pattern, shape and balance.

And speaking of point of view, a photograph does not need a centre of interest, he said. Sometimes, Patterson said, the whole picture is the centre of interest.
He touched upon multiple exposures, and how to create stunning photos by using panning, turning, rotating and zooming techniques.
He showed images that put to the test generally accepted principles of photography: For example, photos in which nothing is in focus.

Patterson, who has photographed animals and landscapes all over the world, urged artists to honour the sense of scale, honour the habitat of wildlife, and to back up and move away from objects in order to view them in their context.
He encouraged photographers to capture the mundane. Patterson showed how he took a plain, featureless white plastic chair and, with light and patterns and texture, created a striking image.

Patterson, who does not use a flash, ended his presentation with a seven-minute slide show "A Place to Dream." Set to Robert Gass' composition, The Journey Home, the show reflected what club vice-president Bill Kellett called the entire presentation: Nourishing inspiration from a master of the craft.

FVI is Coming! Think Night!

The FVI committee is hard at work and meeting regularly. There are a number of important things for you to know:

• Concentrate on getting some great night photographs! It's our turn to win top honours! To help you with that, see the article later in this newsletter, Shoot at Night with Ambient Light.
• Here's a Night idea for you. There is a big party in Vancouver on the weekend of February 11-13 to celebrate one year since the opening of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Part of that is Illuminate Yaletown on Friday and Saturday evenings. More info here: http://bit.ly/hqE6dJ.

To help with the planning and promotion of the FVI:

• Do you, or do your family, friends, colleagues, have connections that may help us obtain door prizes? If you can provide a connection, pleasce email Glen Mackenzie at glenmackenzie@shaw.ca.
• Do you occasionally visit other camera clubs? Could you make an FVI announcement there? If you can help by visiting another club, please let Kirsti know at dutchgirlstudio@shaw.ca.

Altered Reality Excels!

The Langley Camera Club achieved the second highest score in Canada in a recent national CAPA competition. Wow! What talent we have!

Next outside competition is "footwear". Gather your images and watch for details.

February Executive Committee Meeting

Your executive met on February 2. Below is a brief summary of our discussions. Note that between now and May, the first half of the meeting is club business, the second half is devoted to FVI.

• The Freeman Patterson event was reviewed and all agreed that it was most successful. Appreciation to all of the committee was expressed again. Financially, the event had net proceeds of approximately $8000. There was preliminary discussion about ways to use those funds to create and support educational opportunities for club members. No final decisions have been made.
• It was agreed that the club membership list is a document for internal use only, and for club business. Members who have a business that they'd like to promote to members will be invited to post their business on the club website. We hope to have this set up soon.
• A member suggested that, for external submissions to competitions, all members have a voice in the selection process by an opportunity to view and vote on line. This was considered and decided against due to the considerable increase in workload as well as other reasons.
• A treasurer's report was made. We are on track as expected. We currently have 96 members.

A request from the Township of Langley

Recently we heard from Caroline Miller who writes, "I am part of a team putting together an Arts and Cultural Services Plan for the Township of Langley. As we are near to producing our second and final draft, we are searching for relevant photos - taken in Langley and/or near surrounds - which represent some of the arts and cultural assets of the township."

Caroline goes on to say that the images most wanted are:

• children involved in the arts - dance, music, festivals
• heritage – buildings
• walks - by the river
• winter/summer/seasonal scenes in the community
• visual and performing arts, dance

If you are able to provide the township with images, they would be most grateful. Unfortunately, there is no payment but your name would be credited in the publication. Images could be sized as you would for a 4x6 print. Please send them directly to Caroline at carolinemiller@shaw.ca within the next two weeks.

Ponder this a minute …

THE SITUATION:

In Washington, DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes, a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes, a 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes, the musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After one hour, he finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music. This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

1. In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
2. If so, do we stop to appreciate it?
3. Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: ??If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made . . .
Wonder how many other things we are missing as we rush through life?

Seriously: SOMETHING TO PONDER!!!!???

(Thanks to Rick Church for this contribution.)

Broadway Camera Coming to Surrey

In March, Broadway Camera will open a new location at 10153 King George Boulevard. To encourage our members to come and visit, they are offering you, with your valid LCC member card, a 10% discount (at any of their four locations) toward the purchase of selected regular priced items. More info at www.bccamera.com.

Empire State of Mind

It's not glitzy or colourful. There are no flashing lights or interactive displays for the kids. But the latest exhibit at Langley Centennial Museum isn't for the faint of heart, either. The series of 50 black and white images hanging on the walls of the museum gallery requires no dressing up, as Lewis Hine's photographs of the construction of the Empire State Building — shot literally from the ground up — take viewers 1,454 feet and 102 storeys into the air. No hardhats or harnesses for the men who built it, just denim overalls and newsboy caps. It's enough to make the stomach do a little flip, even with both feet planted firmly on the gallery floor. The images, on loan from the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York, will be on exhibit in the Fort Langley museum until March 20.

Development Night Reminder

Our next Development Night will be on February 16. We hope to see many of your images there. The format for the coming night is focus groups, where members cluster around a laptop computer to view images. This can be a great learning experience for you, if your images are in there. And remember, if you submit images, you are expected to be in attendance.

Shoot at Night with Ambient Light

The following article is by Mike Hagen, Out There Images, from his November 2010 newsletter. To see the images he refers to, view the newsletter on line at http://www.outthereimages.com/10_11_newsletter.html

Your GOAL (Get Out And Learn) assignment for last month was to take some shots at night while only using ambient light. I didn't want you to use accessory flash or lighting equipment to augment your scene; rather, I wanted you to limit yourself to the city lights, the starlight or moonlight.

Creating compelling photographs at night is one of the most difficult things you can do as a photographer. It seems like everything conspires against us: long shutter speeds, difficult white balance, correct exposure, dynamic range and composition. Since shooting at night is so difficult, many people just don't do it. They've tried it once or twice and ended up getting photographs that look like they were taken in a dungeon. So, they decide that they will leave night photography to some other brave soul to tackle.

I'm here to tell you that you CAN take great photographs at night. As long as you understand the fundamental issues, you can easily overcome them with a little planning and preparation. So, let's go through the major issues one by one and talk about the strategies for overcoming them.

Long Shutter Speeds

Obviously, if you are photographing at night, then the overall light level is very low. In order to get a usable picture, you'll need to use a long-ish shutter speed. My night photographs range in shutter speeds from about 1/15 second all the way down to 30 seconds. To counter these long shutter speeds I have to support the camera with a tripod or some other method. If I don't have a tripod with me then I brace the camera against a wall or lean against a nearby tree. For example, in the photos of Rockville Town Square, to the left, I braced my camera against a tree.

Another way to fight the longer shutter speeds is to use a higher ISO setting. If I'm left with no other option other than to handhold my camera for a photograph, then I will happily set my camera to ISO 3200 or ISO 6400. For city scenes, this means that I can often get my shutter speed up to about 1/30 second. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend that you keep your ISO as low as possible in order to avoid noise; typically ISO 200.

As a side note, I get tons of questions asking me which tripod to buy. My answer to everyone is to get the Gitzo 6X tripods (www.photoproshop.com) or the Really Right Stuff Versa Tripod (www.reallyrightstuff.com).

Correct Exposure
Many people who attempt to take photographs at night blindly trust their camera's matrix meter. One of the "benefits" of the matrix metering system is that it is designed to prevent overexposing the highlights in a scene. As a consequence, bright lights such as street lamps or automobile headlights will cause your light meter to dramatically underexpose the scene, which is why so many people's night photos look like they were taken in a dungeon.

The remedy for this is to automatically add exposure compensation. I find that if I'm including street lights in the photo itself, then I need to add at least one stop of light to get a usable photograph. Many times, I need to add 1.3 or even 2.0 stops to make a photo work. For example, look at the images of Rockville Town Square again to the left. The first image was taken with the camera's exposure meter set to 0.0. The second image was set for an exposure compensation of +1.0. Quite an amazing difference, isn't it? The first image is black and devoid of detail. The second image shows the bricks on the street and even the blue of the early morning sky.

When you add exposure compensation for scenes like these, don't worry about blowing out the details in the lights themselves. Your viewers won't care if they can't see details in the lights, but they will care that they couldn't see detail in the shadows if you had underexposed the photo.

Large Areas of Blackness
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your night photographs is to include large areas of blackness. When you view a dark scene with your own eyes, you can easily make out details in the shadows. That's what makes the human eye so amazing. However, your camera doesn't do a very good job of capturing details in the shadows, and these areas always turn completely black in the photo.

It is common for people to include big sections of blackness without thinking about it, only to later look at their photos with disappointment. So, fill that area of blackness with something interesting! Take a look at the photograph of the boat (left). You can see here that I composed the boat so it was at the upper half of the frame; I did this so that the reflection of the lights would fill the lower (i.e. black) area of the photo. Had I framed the boat so that it was at the bottom, I would have had a big area of black above it, and the photo would be … boring.

The main point here is to "fill the frame with light." Look for elements that are well illuminated and make them very prominent in the photo. The carnival photo to the left is a good example of this approach. So is the monster truck photo. In both cases, I found things that were brightly lit and filled the frame.

Another solution to filling up the large area of blackness is to include the moon in the photograph. In fact, I think that the moon is one of the better ways to add context to the scene as long as you've composed the picture well. You'll generally want to position the moon over an interesting subject like a city skyline or a freeway so that the moon adds an interesting element to the otherwise boring sky.

Two photos to the left show how I used the moon to fill the sky. The first is a photograph of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at night. The moon is not just "in" the photo, but it is also backlighting the high cirrus clouds. The long 30 second exposure enhanced the sense of movement as the clouds moved across the sky. The other photo was taken in New Jersey a couple weeks ago outside of my hotel window. I framed the highway below and the moon above to add visually interesting elements in both parts of the frame. Unfortunately, the middle part of the frame still has regions of solid black, but that's ok. I'll do better next time!

White balance
The color of light at night obviously depends on the main light source. The moon is a totally different color than a street light, which is different than lights from an office building. Your white balance setting should be based on what element in the scene you want to be the main subject.

For example, if you've defined a building in the scene to be your main subject, then you should white balance for the light bulbs inside the building. These days, the bulbs used inside most buildings are fluorescent. So, setting the camera's white balance to fluorescent will cause the building's lights to turn white, while the other lights in the city will turn different colors (orange, blue, green, etc.). That's ok. The general rule of thumb with white balance is that as long as your subject has the proper color cast, then everything else is ok.

White balance for shooting in the wilderness at night is completely different. In this case, you are either going to be using the moon or the stars as your main illumination source. Therefore, you'll need to set your white balance to sunny. That's right! Sunny. Since the moon reflects light directly from the sun, and that light lands on the Earth, the best WB is sunny or about 5200K. Star light is also sunny WB.

I love shooting landscapes at night because of the seemingly magical results that appear after the long exposures. What initially seems dark and lifeless suddenly comes to life in vibrant color on my camera's LCD panel! I recommend starting your moon-lit landscape exposures at approximately f5.6, ISO200 and 20 - 30 seconds. If you're lucky, you'll also see stars showing up in your dark skies. As long as you keep your ISO settings nice and low, around 200, then you'll keep your noise to a minimum.

Summary
So, now that you have some solutions to overcoming the difficulties of night photography, I want you to get back out there and improve upon last month's GOAL assignment. Add some exposure compensation, set your white balance properly, fill the frame with light and use a high quality tripod. Then, shoot some totally awesome pics!

Humpback Whale Workshop in Haida Gwaii

I am pleased to announce the details of an upcoming humpback whale photography workshop I am offering this Spring with Moresby Explorers, in Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), British Columbia: May 1 - 7, 2011.

We will spend 7 days aboard a Zodiac photographing humpback whales who come and feed in large numbers in Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands). Space is limited to 8 photographers, both professional and amateur, who have a keen interest in getting great whale shots. We will shoot daily 8 to 10 hours, taking advantage of the amazing light, and learning the tricks of successful marine mammal photography. Our focus will be the humpbacks as they feed on krill and pilchards, but we will also have the opportunity to photograph sea lions, migratory birds and intertidal life.

Photo workshop leader is Vancouver-based environmental writer and wildlife photographer Isabelle Groc who specializes in marine ecosystems and endangered species. Her articles and photographs have been published in a variety of magazines including Discover, British Columbia magazine, Canadian Wildlife, Canadian Geographic, and more. Her next book, Gentle Giants: An Emotional Face to Face With Dolphins and Whales, will be published in the Spring.
For more information, detailed itinerary, and to sign up, visit:
http://www.moresbyexplorers.com/whalePhotographyTrip.rhtml

Thank You from Jared Hobbs

I received a message from Jared, our January presenter, to say how much he enjoyed his visit with us. Also to let us know that Owls are alive and well at Reifel Bird Sanctuary. He took these photos (and many others) the day after his visit. Shot with a 500 mm lens with a 1.4x extender.

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