Hello, Everyone.

First, I would like to thank Doug Underwood and Deborah Barley for doing the "Tips & Tricks" and "Photo Essay" presentations at the last meeting. I know that everyone appreciated their insights and the time they spent putting it all together.

The following activities are planned for the January 31st meeting:

MONTHLY CHALLENGE

The theme for the monthly challenge is "Around the house/Something you love." The category is all set up on the APLCC website so you may begin uploading photos whenever you wish. Just remember that this month's challenge requires that you take three photos of the same object (anything around the house including people, pets or inanimate objects) from three different perspectives and pay close attention to the lighting. Try to capture the essence of the thing by way of varied and interesting compositions. Experiment with lighting and shadows. It’s not necessary to have expensive lighting kits for this -- just use lights around the house. I have set up a page on the APL Camera Club website with three embedded videos that give suggestions on how to approach composition and lighting:

Click here to watch the videos

PRESENTATIONS

I will do a presentation on how to use three different HDR software applications: Picturenaut, Luminance HDR, and Photomatix. The first two are open-source; Photomatix is not. We will compare and contrast what you get for free versus what will cost you some money.

I will also do a short presentation on the workflow involved in creating my McKenzie Marsh video. You will see how you can take some not very good video (what I started with) and by creatively using the tools available in a video editing program, such as Adobe Premiere, end up with something that looks pretty good.

Click here to watch the finished video

PHOTOS ESSAYS

William Varela is going to do the photo essay part of the meeting.

TIPS & TRICKS

Deborah Barley will show how to use the clone tool in Photoshop and how to reduce an overexposed area in a photograph.

I will show how to selectively keep colour in a photograph while rendering the rest of the photo in black and white.

STAR TRAILS TUTORIAL

Awhile back William Varela did a presentation at one of the APLCC meetings on free open-source software that he used to compile star trails photos and agreed to do an online tutorial on how to do your own star trails. William completed the tutorial and I finally found some time to post it online. If you're interested in star trails photography you can click here to find out the details on how to set up your camera and use the free open-source software to create your own star trails. Thanks again, William, for all the time and effort you put into this tutorial.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the 31st.

Ronen