Eastern Maine Camera Club

Two posts ago I gave some examples of the Grunge Style. One of the feedback questions asked for confirmation that the next competition category was any Abstract, Grunge, or HDR. This is correct any of the heavy manipulation genre is acceptable for the next meeting. So see what you can produce. This will be difficult to judge because the images will likely be extremely varied. The impact of the image and the emotion that it brings to the viewer will likely produce the highest scores. After all this is an art form and just applying filters will not be enough. The image needs to grab our attention, make us laugh or cry, or catch us off guard. As always the basics must be there like high quality prints, good exposure, and great composition just to put your image in the running but then you will need that something extra that is hard to define.

Here is a link to John Paul Caponigro's website. John is a world renowned artist using imagery and imagination in his work, and he lives right here in Cushing Maine. One of his slide show galleries is located at this link:

http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/gallery/scroll.php

check it out, you may find some inspiration here.

 Good Luck and I hope to see you next Thursday

Chuck Rohn - President

Last Thursday night we had a fantastic presentation and demonstration by James Daigle. James is a veteran fashion photographer with years of experience and a list of credits too long to begin to cover here.

Several club members and James spent a couple of hours setting up three sets with different lighting and backgrounds. We also set up a couple of cameras with WiFi and Tethered connections to a projector so we could view the images as they were taken.

James began with a half hour slide show and commentary on his career, techniques, and hints on what works and what doesn't. A team of Hair and Makeup Artists from Deja'Vu Salon arrived right on que with several models and wardrobes for the demonstration. It was fascinating to see how professionals work together as a team from the models intuitive understanding of James' instructions, to the Hair and Makeup Artists constantly making adjustments, and James finding just the right light, angle and  composition as they made great images together.

As James worked he explained the relationship between the possible intent of each image and the techniques used to get the shot. At times the image was about the outfit (wedding dress, Jacket, Jeans) itself, or the emotion of the model, or the relation between the two models being photographed.

Although it was standing room only from 6 PM to 9 PM no one was anxious for the presentation to be over. Here is one of the images from the shoot.

We are hoping to set up a full day workshop with James some time in the near future. Look for more information here and we hope to see you there.

Thanks again to Deja'Vu Salon, the Models who volunteered to help us, and a special thanks to James Daigle for agreeing to come and do this presentation.

Chuck Rohn - President

I promised to get a few samples up. Now all I have to do is figure out the best way to do that so that all of our members can EASILY get to and view them. This is one attempt but I may change the method or duplicate the posts as I work with Kevin to better understand the hows and whys of this site.

I hope you enjoy these and that they help set the stage for our competition next week.

Make sure you also read the blog entry that Don Darling has posted http://easternmainecameraclub.org/the-vaguely-viewfinder-blog.aspx that is an excellent discussion of these techniques, software, and even a link to free software that aids in producing this look.

Don't be confused by the HDR references and think that this Grunge stuff is the same as HDR, It is not. Grunge is only a style that can be achieved with HDR software or processing where the process is somewhat over done. Grunge can also be achieved with other non HDR processes such as Topaz plug in routines that operate on only one image and does not merge multiple images taken with multiple exposure settings.

Please add comments so that we can begin to explore the new features of this website. 

Thanks - Chuck Rohn - President

Site Design 3 is the winner.  Here are all the results: