March 2015

Newsletter ISSUE N°3

Fall 2009

In Focus!

The Camera Club of Hendersonville March 2015 Steering Committee:

Ron Anderson, Treasurer: Mitch Randall, Presenter: Walt Chase, Website: Bob Benedict, Newsletter Bob Coffey

ronwande@bellsouthnet [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Next Meeting:

The Club meets March 24 at 6:30 pm at the Chamber of Commerce Building, 204 Kanuga Road (intersection with Church Street).

Critique Group:

Meets Tuesday, March 10 of at 1:00 at the Unitarian Community Church, 2021 Kanuga Road.

March Meeting

One half of the meeting will be Show and Tell. By12:00 PM March 21, send up to three photographs to Peter Jones: [email protected] The format for labeling photos is on the Club website at: www.cameraclubofhendersonville.com The other half of the meeting will be a presentation by Ron Partin of scenes from Historic Hendersonville. Ron is a Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green University. He taught courses in education consultation, mental health in the classroom, time and stress management, and learning psychology. He is the author of The Classroom Teacher's Survival Guide.

Forum Topics:

Since 2000, Ron and his wife Jan have made their home in Hendersonville. He enjoys a wide range of activities: genealogy, golfing, square dancing, hiking, tennis, blue grass music etc . Ron is a volunteer at the Carl Sandburg Home National Site, giving tours of the home.

The Forum topics for our regular meetings for the rest of the year are: April 28th - Texture July 28 - Portraits/Candids October 22 - Dilapidated

February Recap

Note: Weather hampered attendance at a very informative and useful program. For those who missed it, this is a much longer than usual recap, that is continued on p. 5. Our guests were Curtis Smalling, Western North Carolina Director of Land Bird Conservation for the Audubon Society, and bird photographer, Todd Arcos. Curtis explained there are over 470 bird species in North Carolina, with 250 species in western North Carolina. Of that 250, 150 are breeding species. The Audubon bird program has five parts: (1) Putting Forests to Work for Birds identifying the top 10 percent of forests providing habitat for birds; (2) Sharing our Seas and Shores - identifying and trying to mitigate coastal development that has disturbed bird Camera Club of Hendersonville

His "Independent Studies" consists of finding a topic of interest and researching it for up to a year. Thus the interest in Old Hendersonville.

March Refreshments Michael McVean & Mitch Randall

Photographer of the Month: Lowell Cooper

The Photographer of the Month will feature several of our new members. Some like Lowell are returning to an earlier interest in photography. Page 1

The pictures were taken between 1975 and 1980. His bio: My interest in photography goes back to when I was in high school in the the early 1950's. At that time our school had a darkroom and an old 4 X 5 Speed Graphic camera (the camera belonged to the principal), and it was used by several of us who acted as the school photographers. My father had a friend who gave me a Minolta Auto Press, which was a World War II vintage Japanese press camera that he acquired during his time as a Marine in the Pacific during the war (I still have the camera). As soon as possible I built a darkroom in my parent's garage. Years later in the early 1970s I had a darkroom included in the new home I was having built in order to introduce my children to the hobby of taking, developing and printing photos, mostly black and white work. After the home with the darkroom was sold, my photographic endeavors more recently have been digital photos of vacation and family, which are processed by others locally

Old General Store

One of our new neighbors, Phyllis Procopio, told me about the Hendersonville Camera Club, and I decided it was time that I get back into photography with something more advanced than the simple point and shoot digital I presently have, and to learn about digital darkroom processing. I figured the Club would offer help in pursuing those goals. I was born in Asheville, but my parents moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee when I was three years old, and then to Miami when I was eight years old. I am married to Linda and have three children and four grandchildren, all of them in Miami. Other than time spent at Emory University in Atlanta, and the military in Germany, I spent most of my life in South Florida, until 1997 when we retired and moved to Brevard. I spent thirty-seven years in the insurance business as an owner of an insurance agency specializing in commercial and institutional property and liability insurance. In August of 2014, we decided to downsize to a smaller home with less upkeep, and we chose Hendersonville for our home.

A Boy and His Dog Camera Club of Hendersonville

Bryan's Girlfriend

Old Ironsides Page 2

Florida Sunset

Halloween Tip of the Month: Sharpen Photos in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) While many photographers will head straight to Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw can be a useful tool. The amount of sharpening needed will depend on several factors, including the type of subject and detail to the image resolution and camera used to take the shot.

Rodeo Cowboy

The first tool is the Amount, which controls the strength of the effect. For normal capture sharpening set this to 50 or less, but a greater amount may be needed if processing the raw file is for direct output for a print or website. The second slider is the Radius that determines the number of pixels affected by the sharpening. Next, the Details slider, with higher amounts such as 40 to 50 enhancing detail in texture and fine details, while lower values such as 10 to 20 will restrict the sharpening to more obvious edges in the subject. Finally, there is a Masking control that allows one to restrict the amount of

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sharpening in less detailed areas of the image to minimize noise. For images shot at low ISO settings, one can keep this setting close to zero, but up to around 50 for images where noise becomes visible in smooth toned areas.

In the fifth volume Kelby provides new recipes, with the added benefit of a behind the scenes photo so readers can see exactly how the shot was done.

This tip is #16 from Chris Rutter, 20 Ways to Get Sharper Shots This Summer. Digital Camera World, August 2013.

From the 173 Customer Reviews on Amazon, the average was 4.5 out of 5.

From the Bookshelf

The Photographer's Dictionary Bokeh

Two recent books that may be of interest to photographers are Lynsey Addario's Its What I Do: A Photographers Life of Love and War (Penguin, 2015), and Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book, Part 5: Photo Recipes (Peachpit Press, 2014). Addario is a MacArthur " "Genius" Fellowship recipient and was part of the team that won the 2009 Pulitizer Prize for International Reporting. She had photographed the Afghan people and culture in the late 1990s, and after 9/11 she got the assignment to go back to Afghanistan. She has covered almost all of the major wars in the 21st century, and the book tells of her headline-making kidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war. She relates the difficulties of competing in a mostly male profession, of balancing home life and and her profession, and of using her fears to create empathy. The Publishers Weekly Review states: "Highly readable and thoroughly readable…Addario's memoir brilliantly succeeds not only as a personal and professional narrative, but also as an illuminating homage to photojournalism's role in documenting suffering and injustice, and its potential to influence public opinion and official policy."

Derived from the Japanese "to blur", this term is used to describe the aesthetic quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas of a picture, or the lens creating them. Smooth, circular, outof-focus highlights are a feature of "good bokeh".

Workshop Disclaimer: The Camera Club does not endorse or support the Workshops listed in the Newsletter, but provides the information for our members only. Bill and Linda Lane, of Nature's Images, located in Montpelier, VA will be running five workshops in 2015, ranging from Spring the the Smoky Mountains, to Fall color in North Carolina. They can be reached at: www.lanephotoworkshops.com

From the Editor The Newsletter is going out early this month, as Judy and I will be going to Iceland to try to photograph the Northern Lights. The operative word is "try" as clouds, snow, and high winds on an photo trip to Iceland two years ago left us with one pale sighting.

Last, But Not Least

Ron Anderson has provided a linkage with additional information and an excerpt: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/ the_online_photographer/2015/02/lynseys-new-book.html Scott Kelby is editor and Publisher of Photoshop User magazine, and the author of more than 60 books. His The Digital Photography Book Series is the top selling digital photography book of all time. Kelby relates that in the first four volumes, the last chapter is the most popular: "Photo Recipes to Help You Get the Shot:". There Kelby shows a final shot and how he got the image. Kelby calls this the "straight to the point, skip the tecnojargon approach". The Camera Club of Hendersonville

Our Thanks to Ron Anderson. Page 4

habitat; (3) Saving Important Areas - 96 have been identified in North Carolina; (4) Shaping a Healthy Climate and Clean Energy Sources - one third of bird species are vulnerable to climate change, moving north as temperatures rise; (5) Creating Bird Friendly Communities - in North Carolina 80 percent of the plants are non-native, and do not provide the necessary food or shelter for birds. Local Roots is a program in conjunction with nurseries to provide more native plants.

Hooded Mergansers (Huntington Beach State Park, S.C.)

Kentucky Warbler (Green River) Curtis noted that bird photographers have a responsibility to avoid flushing out birds in order to photograph them, particularly if they are weak from long migrations. A problem also exists with people playing bird songs or calls on smartphones or portable devices. Technically a permit is needed for this. Overuse can affect where birds breed. Northern Gannett (Huntington Beach State Park, S.C.) As cameras greatly increase the number of focal points, Todd relies upon the camera's autofocus mode. He never crops a photo more than 50 percent, as too much detail is lost. His website is: toddarcosphotography.com

Long Tailed Duck

(Asheville)

Todd Arcos provides a number of bird pictures for the Audubon Society. For his specialty, and for wildlife photography in general, the keys to success are knowledge and patience. Many birds in North Carolina have micro-habitats. That is, they return year after year to a very small area, perhaps a glen or even a snag. Todd keeps a notebook of sightings and areas; thus he takes 90 percent of his photos from the car.

Long Tailed Duck (Huntington Beach State Park, S.C.)

Among Todd's tips for bird photography, one is to avoid the golden hours. While important in landscape photography, its overuse in avian photos results in unnatural tones that distort birds' true colors.

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