Author Archives: Wallace Gilbraith

The stage is set, reports prepared, projector tested – now to welcome a good complement of members to participate in the Annual General Meeting, for a review of the season just finishing, and a look forward to the season to come in October.

We followed the traditional format, to hear reports from office-bearers providing an overview of such areas as Programme (above), Internal Competitions (below), and others. Also to appoint a new committee, who will continue to meet over the summer while making arrangements for next season.

Presiding over the committee, the president is appointed for a 2-year term, supported for the first year of that by the immediate past president.

This year saw such a handover, as Graham Robb (above) stepped back, and Ian Mackay (below) stepped forward.

This was our last meeting at the library for the current season – next week we meet in a restaurant, for a sociable feast and for prizegiving. We’ll take a break from accepting new members, and will re-open our membership form in time for the start of next season.

In the meantime, our Facebook Group at Perth Photo Forum will continue over the summer as ‘an online place to learn from discussion of photography, by and for the people of Perth, Perthshire, Perth and Kinross, and surroundings’. So, not just for PPS members. And not just online – we also arrange a series of sociable photo walks. We’ll hope to see you out with your camera over the summer. Bon Voyages!

This will be our final week at the library until the autumn, and it will be our Annual General Meeting. Although there are some formalities to observe, it’s pretty relaxed, and it won’t take the whole of our evening. One item for discussion is to ask the committee to look at how best to support members who feel they’re just starting out with their photography, and whether this might include forming a novice section for internal competitions. We’ll aim to clarify the intention of the membership, and let the committee work out the practicalities over the summer. 

The following week we’re not at the library, we’ll be dining out. Lots to look forward to. 

http://www.perthshirephotographicsociety.org.uk/2022/06/programme-2022-23/#22-march-2023

With the season of weekly meetings coming to an end, we’re no longer accepting new members. Our membership form will re-open in time for next season, which starts in Oct 23. Meanwhile, new faces are welcome to join us informally in the Perth Photo Forum, for Facebook photo-discussion, and for in-person photo walks over the summer.

For our final Members’ Night of the season, we met upstairs, where it’s less formal than the lecure theatre, and the Home Training group shared what they’ve been up to these last few months. In December, John Boyd had set a photographic challenge to those of us looking to get more confident with both camera and processing. This developed into a wee study group who have been meeting to practise specific camera techniques, and then to process the images to bring out their best.

Lizzie Rawlings presented first, and spoke of how these training sessions have opened her eyes to new ways of seeing, as well as giving her the confidence to capture that in her camera.

Alistair Dewar couldn’t attend, and John presented his images. Even in John’s second-hand telling of the tale, Alistair’s delight at sucessfully photographing moving water was clearly evident.

Paul Trodden shared examples of his progress, and his excitement at how far his photography has moved forward in the space of a few months, with regular and attentive practise. Even for Paul, himself no stranger to public speaking, the increase in confidence was obvious.

The evening wound up with a lively (but never rowdy) discussion of black’n’white photography, taking some of John’s images as the starting point, and inviting comments from the membeship. Overall, a very sucessful format for an evening.

This week is our last members’ night of the season. Following his Home Training Ground presentation earlier in the season, John Boyd has been hot-housing some of our newer members with monthly challenges to stretch their camera handling, and their processing of images using Adobe Lightroom. 

Lizzie, Alastair and Paul will share their progress, with: manual settings; shallow depth of field; high contrast images; the notion of motion. 

To finish, John will show some mono digitals and prints to stimulate conversation, comments and advice, on the taking, processing and printing of Black and White images.

http://www.perthshirephotographicsociety.org.uk/2022/06/programme-2022-23/#15-march-2023

New faces are still welcome to attend two weeks on a trial basis, to see if you’d like to join us for the season. For those who are ready to join, the online Membership Form for the season is open. The membership subscription reduces by 50% after New Year, and the £27.50 can be paid by BACS or by cheque – details are in the membership form.

You really had to be there. Not just for the Selfies, and the AV’s, but to marvel at David regaling LIzzie and Vicky with whatever out at the tea table. Thank you, tea team, for keeping us going.

Meanwhile, back in the hall, the Selfie competition entries have been shown, and people are casting their votes on our online voting form, which calculates the scores and the placings while we enjoy chat over tea and biscuits. And later, in the dark, the voting on the AVs too. Congratulations to all our entrants for such creativity.

The winning entries are over on this year’s Gallery page. The Top 5 Selfies are there. The top AVs are all listed too, and some will even play. If an AV doesn’t play, it’s because it’s got copyright music on, and we can’t share it online. Which brings us back to the first paragraph – you really had to be there.

This week sees our final two competitions of the season, each designed to stretch our creativity in different directions. The Dall Cup is for selfies, and the Simpson Cup is for audio-visual presentations. 

They’re both judged by the members present. So, no learned commentary from an external judge this time, just us, looking at all the entries, then casting our votes to identify the top crowd-pleasers. Don’t miss what promises to be a fun evening – even though none of our entrants have done anything quite like this! Bring your own pen or pencil.

http://www.perthshirephotographicsociety.org.uk/2022/06/programme-2022-23/#08-march-2023

New faces are still welcome to attend two weeks on a trial basis, to see if you’d like to join us for the season. For those who are ready to join, the online Membership Form for the season is open. The membership subscription reduces by 50% after New Year, and the £27.50 can be paid by BACS or by cheque – details are in the membership form.

There was something of a ‘planning’ theme running through last night’s meeting. From Ian and Roy make sure of getting the slideshows set up beforehand, and Ian then giving us an outline of the programme for the coming weeks.

Roy’s tale was of a trip that was planned as one thing, but which turned out to be quite another. To Australia and New Zealand to visit family and tour the sights – sounds straightforward enough. But in hindsight, early 2020 wasn’t the best time to go, and the plans were disrupted by Covid lockdown in a foreign country, and a lot of re-planning to get home at all.

During his extended stay, in a small town in North Island, it was the morning photo walks that gave Roy a sense of normality.

The strong narrative thread through Roy’s presentation gave a sense of the benefit of starting out with a plan, and being prepared to adapt it to suit changing circumstances.

Next up is our last Speaker’s Night of the season, and we will be welcoming Roy Robertson from Dundee PS. Roy has judged for us several times in recent years, which is quite telling in itself. This time he’s with us as a speaker, and his title is ‘New visions of New Zealand’. The supporting image he gave us at the start of the season, for our Programme page, is as mysterious now as it was then. This should be a great evening.  

http://www.perthshirephotographicsociety.org.uk/2022/06/programme-2022-23/#01-march-2023

New faces are still welcome to attend two weeks on a trial basis, to see if you’d like to join us for the season. For those who are ready to join, the online Membership Form for the season is open. The membership subscription reduces by 50% after New Year, and the £27.50 can be paid by BACS or by cheque – details are in the membership form.

For the Colour Rosebowl competition we hosted Andy Hayes as judge. He started out by describing role being more as a ‘reviewer’ than a ‘judge’, and proceeded to review our 36 prints with perception and generosity. Over the course of of the evening, he fleshed out his comments about our own entries in particular with broader advice about the art and science of printing in general.

Take care with monitor brightness, and calibrate your monitor if you can (PPS has a calibrator for members’ use). Choose your paper to show your subject to best advantage. If possible, select a printing profile to suit the specific combination of printer and paper. Bigger prints aren’t always best, and a small print in a mount can look wonderful. Tidy mounts matter, as does the placement of the aperture in the board, to support the print both artistically and structurally.

To illustrate his point about paper choice, Andy had brought along five prints, being the exact same image (lions in a tree) printed on five different types of paper – gloss, semi gloss, metallic pearl, fine art, and matt – and these attracted great interest in the tea break.

The comments from members afterwards were enthusiastic – we’d not only had an evening enjoying each others prints, with expert commentary, but we’d learned some very practical tips on how to make our prints even more impactful.

This week will see us enjoying the last internal Print competition of the season, the Colour Rosebowl. It’s for up to three prints per member, and the subject matter and treatment is left to the author’s choosing. 

Our visiting SPF udge will be Andy Hayes from Fettercairn, on what we think is probably his first visit to PPS. Andy has a particular interest in conservation photography, in support of protecting the wildlife of the Cairngorms and beyond.

http://www.perthshirephotographicsociety.org.uk/2022/06/programme-2022-23/#22-february-2023

New faces are still welcome to attend two weeks on a trial basis, to see if you’d like to join us for the season. For those who are ready to join, the online Membership Form for the season is open. The membership subscription reduces by 50% after New Year, and the £27.50 can be paid by BACS or by cheque – details are in the membership form.