Author: ksccc

The Ottawa School of Art offers several photography courses for adults.

Digital Photography: After the Capture

You’ve mastered your camera and are excited when you capture an image but aren’t sure where to go from there. In this course, you will learn how to manage and edit your images; from basic adjustments to retouching and creating composites and digital art. Photoshop and Lightroom will be the programs used in this workshop.

Advanced Portraiture Photography

This advanced photography course is aimed for serious photographers, who either want to take up photography as their profession or are serious amateurs who want to produce stunning images of professional standards. The emphasis of this course will be in developing and refining your techniques in a variety of settings and lighting conditions. Basic portrait lighting, advanced concepts, creative studio, and indoor portrait photography will be covered. All types of portraits will be discussed (3 models included).

Take Better Digital Pictures

This workshop will help you get more comfortable with your camera and learn ways to create amazing pictures. We will cover the things that are found on all cameras such as auto mode, the different programs modes, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, menu items, and much more.

Making Better Digital Photographs

This course aims to help beginners develop and intermediate photographers refresh the fundamentals of digital photography, perfect their technical skills and focus on creative visual expression. You will learn how to effectively use natural and artificial lighting, set correct digital exposure, chose shooting locations and apply dynamic composition to create technically accurate and aesthetic images every time! Expand your photographic skills by applying a variety of time-tested techniques for portrait, travel, street, urban, event, still-life, and other types of photography. Hone your photographic abilities and build confidence by shooting in-class assignments, working with professional models, and receiving constructive feedback on your images.

Details on these and other courses are available here.

Fraser Campbell found a really great little cheat sheet you can print out or load into your smart phone that will help you selecting:

• exposure compensation
• aperture
• shutter speed
• ISO
• white balance.

It’s from Ashley Hackshaw and is available here.

Here is your Camera Club executive hard at work planning your next meeting:

Seated: (L-R) Sue Carey, Barrie Thomas, Marg Jackman, Fraser Campbell.

Standing: (L-R) Frank Knor, Stu Moxley, Ken Wilson, Louise Robert.

Missing: Amy Lo, Catherine Easton, and John Williamson.

Please don’t hesitate to approach us with feedback about how we’re doing and ideas for things you’d like us to do in the future.

Here’ a note from Sue Carey about the club member photos displayed at the Centre:

Thanks to everyone who has given us 8×10 photos to be displayed in the KSC. It is gratifying to have such willing participants!

Unfortunately, there has been a delay in changing the display because of difficulty in the framing process. We hope to remedy that problem after talking with the framer and having an adjustment to the brads that hold the backing in place.

We are still looking for photographs. We have the next six ready to go as soon as we resolve the problem. We are still interested in receiving photos to have a supply on hand so we can keep the display ongoing – once we get it going! You may give Louise Robert or me (Sue Carey) an 8×10 photo of your choice, either at a meeting, or leaving it in our name at the front desk of the KSC.

At the November meeting we enjoyed a wonderful slide show of nature photographer Jim Cumming’s photos.  Following the meeting, Martha Bohm contacted him to see if he would consider allowing her to use 5 of his photos for cards her group, The Grassroot Grannies, sell in support of the Grandmothers’ Campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation.  He replied that he would be honoured to do so, and these 5 images were chosen:

These cards have been extremely popular, and the Grassroot Grannies are very grateful for his generosity.

Aaron Johnson publishes an almost daily cartoon strip making fun of photography called What The Duck featuring a duck who’s also a photographer. As you may have inferred from the title, it can sometimes be a little NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) but compared to Marg’s jokes it’s pretty tame.

If you’re looking for a photo editor for your desktop (Windows, chromebook, or Mac), tablet (android or iPad) or smart phone (android or iPhone) you might want to try pix PIXLR. The desktop version runs in a web browser and has a lot of the capabilities of Photoshop Elements including layers. The tablet and phone apps are less capable.

If you’re looking for an online editor that can process RAW files try POLARR. It has lots of capabilities but its user interface is quite different from Photoshop Elements.

Thank you to Alex and Jamie from Henry’s Kanata

for their great presentations on:

• flash card ratings
• using WiFi with your camera
• advantages and disadvantages of mirrorless camera
• different camera sensor sizes
• some new longer telephoto lenses from Sigma and Tamron

Alex also explained that Henry’s offers a 10% discount on what she called “soft goods” (batteries, ink, bags …) to club members with a Kanata Seniors Centre membership card.