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Key Dates For Your Calendar
30 June Deadline for Lexicon Presentation Images Submission
01 July Summer BBQ at the National Yacht Club
10 July Exhibition Set-up
10 July Exhibition Opening and Social Event
24 July Offshoot Presentation at the DLR Lexicon
18 August Exhibition Take Down and Member Images Collection
07 November November Connemara Weekend
Next Monday - the IPF Distinction Panels
It takes time and dedication to prepare a panel of photographs for adjudication by a band of judges. That time and dedication is never wasted and, in the process, succeed or fail, one learns so much. It is to our credit that of 12 Licentiate panels submitted for adjudication 6 were from Offshoot.
Now is the hour to admire their effort as they present their printed images. We can all benefit from their experience and learn. Come and see, come and learn, come and enjoy.
Last Monday – Competition Judging
There is so much more to photography than just pointing and clicking at a likely subject. It is the difference between a work of art and a snap. A work of art in colour shows the richness of our world, no less, but an image in black and white is the medium of the masters where tones come into their own.
Last Monday we had the pleasure of Neil McShane (blackandwhite.ie) who is a renowned photographer in this medium. Neil performs all his photography using film after many year working digitally. He has recently published a book “Shades of Ireland” which demonstrates the art of Landscape Photography in this medium.
Neil gave us a considered review of the images submitted, giving us an insight into the various aspects and roles in judging, whether it is for personal enjoyment, or perhaps, as a more formal entrant to an IPF competition.
Congratulations to all who entered and, in particular:
Level 1:
1st Place Misty Morning by Anne-Marie Fitzpatrick
2nd Place Spider by Noel McMahon
3rd Place Sicilian Burgers by Noel McMahon
Highly Commended
Wolf by Linda Rafferty & Attractive by Stephen Marshall
Level 2:
1st Place Who me by Malcom Broadstock
2nd Place Rooftop Shade by Aoife Carty
3rd Place Kilkenny Reflections on the Nore by Pat Divilly
Highly Commended
Can't Wait to Get There & Going Batty both by Sara Hanley
Level 3:
1st Place Curvature by John O'Connor
2nd Place Taking a Break by Eithne O'Leary
3rd Place Dun Laoghaire Boats in the Fog by Robert Hackett
Highly Commended
Spiral Stairs - Looking up not down & Walking in the shadows both by Jean Clarke
In addition we would like to further congratulate Anne-Marie Fitzpatrick and Noel McMahon who have now moved from Level 1 to Level 2 and Aoife Carty who moves from Level 2 to Level 3.
Club Exhibition
The club's annual exhibition will be held in The Lexicon Library, level 4, from July 12th to 17th August.
To take part in the exhibition the deadline was midnight on the 20th June 2025. If you want to crawl under the wire, please submit up to two images to the link below before Sunday night or else you will miss this prestigious event. The images will be printed, mounted and framed by Steve at a cost of €30 each.
Please upload your files in Tiff format, as it means that the image will print really well.
There will be a launch party after the first night of the exhibition.
Club Presentation at the Lexicon
In conjunction with our annual exhibition, the Lexicon have invited the club to make a presentation. This will take place in the Library on Thursday July 24th from 6pm to 7 pm.
The committee has agreed that this event will be entitled “From bend of bay to swerve of shore” and will feature projected images taken by club members of the people, places and wildlife of the area from Killiney to Sandymount. We hope to include approximately 60 images taken by a wide range of members.
If you would like to have an image included please upload up to three images to the Dropbox link below. High quality jpegs are sufficient and please name each image as follows: membership number, followed by your initials, followed by title e.g. 235EMharbourview.
The closing date for submission is June 30th, after which time the committee will select the images. Please upload images to this Dropbox Link
Summer BBQ
The Offshoot Summer BBQ will be held at the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire on Tuesday 1st July commencing at 8pm. As usual, this is a social occasion with costs of the BBQ food included in your membership but there will be a cash bar in operation.
This is always an enjoyable and sometimes raucous event and the craic is mighty so put it in your diary.
Final Call to Members to Collect Images at the School
We are about to do some cleaning out of the storage cupboard at the school to better accommodate our audio- visual equipment. There is a box full of mounted images belonging to members – some of these images go back to pre-covid times!!
So this is our FINAL CALL to members to collect their images over the next two club meetings.
Remaining images after this time will be donated to a charity shop.
November Connemara Weekend
Plans are advancing for a great photographic trip to Connemara for the weekend 7th – 9thNovember 2025. Details have already been circulated by email. If you require any further information, please contact any members of the Outings Committee.
Tips Of The week
Hold your camera correctly
Sounds obvious doesn’t it, yet the most common mistake photographers make is to hold cameras inappropriately and as a result, get blurry images. Learning to hold your camera correctly is, therefore, essential.
1. Hold your camera with both hands as steady as possible. Grip the camera’s right side with your right hand and place your left hand underneath the lens to support your camera’s weight.
2. Keep the camera close to your body. Lean against a wall or crouch down on your knees for additional support and stability.
3. If you can’t mage 1 or 2 above get a good quality tripod.
Shoot in RAW
If you use only JPEG format you can take a lot of images quickly and, what’s more, JPEG images don’t occupy a large space on your SD card. So why use RAW?
By using the RAW format, you won’t only get high-quality photos, but you will also have more control over post-processing images. You capture a lot more detail and in post-processing you can tweak underexposure, colour temperature, contrast etc. and what’s more the printout looks better.
Read the Histogram
Your camera will show you a histogram before and after you take the shot. It is one of the advantages of the mini-computer that is your camera.
Look at the histogram next to the images. You can see that the image may be overexposed if the histogram’s left side peaks or the images may be underexposed when the histogram’s right side peaks.
Learn from Mistakes
You will make mistakes; we all do and you will get frustrated. But stay positive and learn from your mistakes. Every time you get a bad image, do not delete it. Rather, spend time figuring out what went wrong and how you could improve it.
Next Competition
Our next competition will be printed landscape images; of capturing outdoor scenes, focusing on natural features like mountains, forests, oceans, and fields. It emphasizes composition, lighting, and scale to represent the environment, often with little or no human presence. Landscape images can be rendered in either colour or black and white.
Since this a printed competition, you should save your images in TIF format (Ideally in ADOBE RGB 1998 Colour Space) and name them with your Level Number, Membership Number and Image Title: L2-001-Image Title.tif e.g. L1-123-This is my image title and spaces are allowed.tif.
Note that JPEG files are acceptable, but the image quality will be somewhat lower.
As always, we encourage all of you (especially new members) to enter. The most significant benefit from entering is the feedback from independent judges to help you improve your photography.
You can submit up to 2 images, so get shooting. We look forward to seeing a great selection of images.
Printing Images
If you are printing your own, the deadline for hand-in is Monday, 22nd September; please bring the prints to the club and give them to either Lionel or Jean. You can also send Lionel a digital copy via WeTransfer (Do not upload the images to Dropbox)
For those of you printing via 360-dpi (Steve) the process has changed and hopefully will be less work. The upload is now to the same Dropbox as for Projection. The deadline for upload is Monday 22nd September.
The images from the Dropbox will be send onto Steve for printing and submitting to the Dropbox means you are in agreement with your images being sent on to Steve for printing.
Payment
You will receive, by e-mail, a payment link from 360-dpi for the images you have submitted – with the names and paper type requested. Please pay shortly after receiving the link.
Paper Type
If you want your images on the standard Lustre paper there is no need to do or change anything, but if you wish to have a different paper type you need to add three letters after your membership number in the file title. The payment line invoice you receive from Steve will indicate the price and paper requested.
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Paper Type
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Code
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Price
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Lustre
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€13.51
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Fine Art Pearl
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FAP
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€20.01
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Photo Rag Matt
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PRM
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€20.01
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For example if wish to have your images on Fine Art Pearl you should name your file: L2-001-FAP-Image title.tif
If you omit these letters the assumption is Lustre Paper.
Upload images for printing here
https://www.dropbox.com/request/sLZJEgB245KFzBpAv8Oc
Judging of the prints will be in the Club on Monday, 6th October. Please note that on this night the judging will be by the members themselves, there will be more information to follow on this later.
Some Landscape Photography Tips
The world around you is a wonderful place and you can stumble upon all kinds of interesting places and stunning scenes when out and about. When you find a great location, you want to do it justice.
Here are some tips:
Capture the foreground
Think about how to complement distant scenery with closer details. Foreground interest leads the eye through the scene. A foreground which is dull, empty or out of focus simply wastes a large portion of the frame.
You don't always need a wide-angle lens
Wide angle lenses let you capture the whole breadth of a scene, but not every shot needs a wide field of view. Sometimes zooming in to distant details can lead to more interesting landscape photos.
Choose your time of day
Light becomes a creative choice, it adds atmosphere, and this can take landscape photos to the next level. A classic mistake is to photograph scenes in hard sunlight which often brings out bold colours but usually results in scenes with too much contrast.
Keep things level: straighten your horizon
Keep foreground and background sharp
Often with landscape photography, you want your image sharp from front to back in order to show the maximum amount of detail. Use a narrow aperture (high f number).
A common problem for landscape is focusing on something in your foreground but risk everything behind it being soft. Conversely, if you focus on elements in your background, your foreground is blurry. Hyperfocal distance focusing helps you get more of your frame sharp by finding the closest point at which you can focus and keep your background acceptably sharp.
Don't shoot everything at eye level
Try moving your camera up or down low to experiment with different heights - you might find more interesting g angles. Reflections, for example, will often look better if the camera is held low to the water. |
