Danielle Barabé-Bussières

The featured speaker at our meeting on April 5th will be Danielle Barabé-Bussières

Click on the above to enlarge

Danielle Barabé-Bussières learns photography every day by watching tutorials, researching photography projects and gets some of her inspiration from great photographers. Danielle likes to explore nature, flowers, wildlife and is very passionate about macro photography.
In the recent years, her images have earned several awards in Provincial and National competitions with the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC). Recently, Danielle has participated in the National Image competition and is a “finalist” for the prestigious title of Photographic artist of the year with the PPOC. She is very devoted to photography and she worked hard to achieve a professional level.   She is also very involved with artists’ associations and takes every opportunity offered to her to display her art in the Ottawa area and surroundings. 

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To learn more about Danielle and to see more of her beautiful images, visit her website. To see the slides she showed describing her equipment, settings, software, tips, and contact information, click here.

April Camera Club Meeting

The next Camera Club meeting will be held on Friday, April 5th at 9:15 a.m.

Smokin Cornpipe by Shirley LeClair
  • Slideshow of Member Images from the Negative Space Assignment
  • Nature/Macro Photography by Danielle Barabé-Bussières
  • Winter Challenge Slide Presentation by Ron Pierce
  • Phil’s Tip of the Day on Motion Photography
  • Review of Chosen Photos
  • Announcements and Closing Remarks

Your images for the assignment must be emailed by noon on Friday, March 29th to be included in the slideshow. For details on how to submit photos, including formats and titles, go to our Pictures/How to Submit page.

The next assignment is Solitude and pictures from this assignment will be shown at the May 3rd meeting.

See you at the meeting.

Your Camera Club Executive

Beaverbrook Library Digitization Lab

Last fall some members of our Executive were  provided an early tour of the Beaverbrook Library’s new Digitization Lab and were most impressed . The Kanata  Library has the first such capability in the city of Ottawa.

The facility is now open for business  and the library will be scheduling a special group tour for camera club members in the near future.

You may sign up for one of their monthly tours, by registering here.

In the meantime, you are welcome to start using the equipment in the lab by booking on their website.

Daylight Saving Time

If you’re one of the lucky people who have a camera that knows when to “spring ahead — fall back” you can ignore this blog post.

This message is for the rest of us.

Don’t forget to change the clock in your camera so the time recorded in the EXIF data of your images is correct!

Creativity

In a recent discussion about creativity, club member Sue Carey said:

It is not only, or always, the most exotic trip, or the most Photoshopped photo that has the greatest impact. One does not have to risk life and limb in the winter, or go on exotic trips, to ‘get the shot’. It may encourage all members to look and play with their camera, within a meter of where they are.

Sue recommended this exercise from Freeman Patterson to stimulate creativity:

The best place in the world to SEE is wherever you are.


Time and again I’ve had somebody ask me the question “Where’s a good place to make pictures?” The translation is: “Where can I photograph my preconceptions?” Answering this question is one of the best ways I know to stand still creatively. It’s rather like taking a bus tour to Washington, D.C. to see the cherry blossoms without ever having noticed the beauty of the wild flowers (weeds) in your back yard.


Long ago I came to realize that a good, simple exercise for improving a person’s ability to see is to ask a friend to pick a number, let’s say between 20 and 50 (perhaps 36) and a direction “left,” “right,” or “straight ahead,” then to take 36 steps in the given direction and stop. Using your camera or your smartphone make a minimum of 30 thoughtful compositions in that place (staying within a circle no wider than a metre.) Beginning is easy, as you’ll photograph things you always notice in ways you always see them. However, if you feel like tearing out your hair after struggling to “see” more than 15 or 18 good pictures, you can be almost certain that persisting will reward you with a visual breakthrough.


You have to get on the other side of your normal ways of seeing, to challenge your perfectly natural need to label everything in order to see what’s there, to see in ways you’ve never seen before.


The challenge is often hard, but the achievement is always exhilarating. Give this exercise a serious try at least once a month – especially right around home where everything is so familiar you don’t see it. This is a great exercise, not just for photographers, but for everybody who wants to be more observant.


I made the photograph on page one and the three that follow at spots I move through so often that, every now and then, I make a conscious effort to observe them carefully in order to “see” what normally doesn’t register at all.

Freeman Patterson

Thanks to Freeman Patterson for permission to use the above quote from his IMAGES, IDEAS, and REFLECTIONS Periodical Letter #6 March 2019. For more ideas and images from him, check out his website.

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A “Sneak Peek”

Until March 17, the West Carleton Arts Society has taken over the Kanata Civic Art Gallery for their Spring Fling group exhibition and sale. The gallery is just down the hall from where we hold our camera club meetings and the show is well worth seeing.

When you check out the show, be sure not to miss the three beautiful photographs by Danielle Barabé-Bussières who will be the featured speaker at our April meeting.

Negative Space Photography

Here are four videos on Negative Space Photography which were presented at the March 1st 2019 meeting.

Negative Space in Photography Tutorial by Visual Art Photography Tutorials

Photography Composition Tutorial – Negative Space Photography Using a Cup of Coffee by Visual Art Photography Tutorials

Photography Tips – Negative Space in Photography by Mike Brown

Photography Composition – Simplification and Negative Space by Ted Forbes from The Art of Photography

Phil Tughan

Presentation by Gordon Robertson on March 1st

Gordon Robertson is presenting on the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club – Area Trails and Wildlife. Gordon is a retired professor from the University of Ottawa and now primarily does nature photography and wildlife tours. He chairs the Education and Publicity Committee of the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club and volunteers at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden (FWG). Gordon is also treasurer of the Ottawa Duck Club, which allows one access to the Shirley’s Bay Crown Game Preserve – an excellent and relatively undisturbed wildlife area. He frequently gives tours of the FWG and several other areas such as Petrie Island and Mer Bleue; so he is familiar with the many “wild” areas around Ottawa.

Gordon’s interests in wildlife vary considerably from butterflies and birds to wildflowers and ferns. He is also quite handy with analog and digital photography and digital photo editing. Many of his photos are used in textbooks and in Wikipedia  (>1200) where he is a “Master Editor”.

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You can review Gordon’s excellent presentation here.