OffShoot Photography Society We believe that the image is everything!

17th October 2020

News

 

 

Life In A Laos Village.

Complements and thanks to John McComish for the presentation of his unique, eloquent, considered and interesting experience about Life In A Laos Village last week.   

Entries for National Shield

Only eleven members have submitted images so far. We may not be able to submitt an entry this year.  Deadline is next Tuesday night.

Outings

Late breaking news.  Due to the increase in Covid infections, request by  NPHET to reduce social contacts and by virtue of the fact that we are not a commercial entity, we are suspending official outings for the immediate future.  Our priority is to protect the health of our membership.  We will keep our members informed and  re-introduce as soon as we can.  Unfortunately, this includes our proposed outing to the Phoenix Park this Saturday. 

We will  try to suggest possible locations or ideas where members maybe able to explore in a non group situation in the interim via this newsletter.

Next Monday Night

As promised, Matt O'Brien has a follow up session on Lightroom. Lightroom is a very large application with lots of features and options. Unfortunately, there are many opportunities for confusion and making choices which appear correct at the time, but make life difficult afterwards.  Matt will explore several of the Gottcha's, to help avoid future mistakes.  He will also spend time explaining the Import module, which is the foundation for an efficient Lightroom workflow.

This will be followed by Steve Crozier, who will demonstrate a number of sharpening techniques, why they are useful as well as a number of Mono conversion techniques.

 

Call for Submissions of Images for the IPF National Shield 2020

Deadline for Submission: 20th October

Submission Link: https://www.dropbox.com/request/4T4qTv9gx5fK9VRd4GAL

What is the National Shield?

The IPF National Shield is an annual inter-club competition which is open to all clubs who are affiliated to the IPF.  The competition is designed to cater for members of Photography Clubs who are just beginning their photography journey, so advanced photographers are specifically excluded.

We won this competition last year, so we have a responsibility to maintain the standard of our entry going forward.

Who Can Enter?

It is easier to describe who cannot enter. The following are excluded:

  • If you have won more than one prize or a medal in an IPF competition. (If you have won one you will know). You can win our internal OffShoot competitions or any other (non-IPF) external competitions but still be able to enter the Shield. Participation in last years entry is not a barrier as that is not an individual prize or medal).
  • If you have achieved Associate Distinction (AIPF) or similar
  • If you have achieved a Fellowship Distinction (FIPF) or similar.

The IPF also stipulate ‘’anyone whose club considers him or her to be of an advanced standard in any discipline of photography’’ should be excluded from entering. There are other rules to be considered, which will add to the workload of the selection committee.

Any other fully paid-up member of OffShoot can submit images for selection.  So, if even if you have an IPF Licentiate Certification (LIPF) you can submit images.   Each club will select the best 8 mono and 8 colour images from their eligible members to form two panels.  You can enter images which you have entered in our club competitions or activities, even if you have won or been placed in our own competitions.

To promote entries from photographers at an earlier stage of their development, we are limited to just 2 images per panel from LIPF qualified members. This complicates the selection process for the selection committee but does not limit in any way LIPF holders from entering as many images as the club rules allow.

Call For Images

We are looking for entries from our members.  Please forward your best mono and colour images to this link above. A maximum of 5 colour and 5 mono is allowed per entrant. The images should be in jpg format, with approx. 2000 pixels on the long side and named as follows. 

999_MyPictureTitle.jpg    

Replace 999 with your membership number.  Please do not use your own name as part of the title, as the selection committee needs to review the images anonymously. Please do not use punctuation such as commas, apostrophes or strange characters. Please avoid using spaces. You can use a Capital letter to identify the beginning of a Word (eg My Picture Title becomes MyPictureTitle).

[Please, please, please rename your images as per this format. Not doing so adds massively to the administration of our entry]

We will form a selection committee and shortlist of contenders to represent the club.

We will later seek full resolution images for the shortlisted entries to select our Mono and Colour entry panels.  While we won the overall competition last year, our Mono images were a long way behind the quality of our Colour images, so we ask our members to make an extra special effort submitting Mono images.

To simplify the process,  images can be uploaded to the link https://www.dropbox.com/request/4T4qTv9gx5fK9VRd4GAL.

The photographer retains full copyright.

Why Should I Enter?

  • An opportunity to represent your club.
  • As a club, we have a track record of success in this competition. The more images we receive from our members the higher the quality of entry.
  • The IPF uses these competitions to select entries for other international competitions. It might be you.

Weekly Flickr Theme: Autumn Colours

Remember to include the Theme Name at the start of the image title.  

See more about how the OffShoot Weekly Flickr Theme works at https://tinyurl.com/flickrthem.

Nature is currently providing a beautifully colour autumn display, and we would like you to show us that through your eyes, bringing your creativity and technical skills to bear on it.

Some tips:

1. A polarizer is useful to remove glare and bring increased perceived saturation to colours.

2. Avoid shooting into the sun.

3. Shoot in the Golden hour if you can - in the 45 mins after sunrise and before sunset.

4. Set your white balance to shade for greater warmth in your colours.

While this theme lends itself to landscape, macro and abstract images, there is also ample scope to bring the outside in, e.g. in a still life image.

Looking forward to seeing your efforts!  

Upcoming themes will include the following:

(Dates are approx dates for when images can start to be posted to Flickr, usually a Friday night or Saturday morning)

23/10/2020 Sunrise/Sunset

30/10/2020 Recreate a painting

06/11/2020 Emotions - happiness/pride/anger/…..

13/11/2020 Night - eg astro / cityscapes / light trails / night portrait etc.

20/11/2020 Street (candid images of daily life)

27/11/2020 Creative selfies

04/12/2020 Literature

11/12/2020 Winter wildlife

18/12/2020 FIRE

25/12/2020 Christmas

Shoot With Me News

The second part of our SWM is now in progress. We look forward to the Showcase in December.

As always, the safety of our club members is paramount and everyone should follow the recommended guidelines and club protocols.

What's On

Speakers and Outings

Here are the next scheduled meetings and events for the Society:

Members will be able to attend our outings by registering for specific outings. Keep up to date with the latest events at https://www.offshoot.ie/whats-on/.

Member's Photo of the Week

Just a note for new members – if you want any of your pictures considered for the photo of the week, you just have to post them to the OffShoot Flickr group at:

https://www.flickr.com/groups/offshoot_society.

There’s also the latest images published on Flickr that are displayed on the OffShoot home page.

 

[Note. To join the Offshoot Flickr group, you must first be a Flickr member. Then send the email address used to join Flickr to webmaster@offshoot.ie. You will get an email when you have been added to the group. Please be patient as this is a manual process.]

Cloghlea Bridge by Jean Hartin

Phoenix Park by Phil Tung

From the OffShoot Website
Club Outing - Grand Canal
On Saturday 3rd October seven OffShoot members turned up at Leeson St. Bridge to explore the photographic opportunities of the Grand Canal. It became obvious quite quickly that there was…
Read more...
Club Outing - Dun Laoghaire Sunset
Friday 25th September evening turned out to be bright and sunny but unfortunately there was very little cloud at all in the sky. As a result the sunset was very…
Read more...
Interesting Video

If you come across one you want to share let us know at newsletter@offshoot.ie.

PiXimperfect: Turn VIDEO to Brilliant Long Exposure Photo! - Photoshop Tutorial

PHLEARN: Curves vs. Levels: What's the Difference? | Photoshop

 

Free Photoshop Workshop

Here is a link to an interesting Photoshop Training Summit / Seminar.  There is a comprehensive programme, to suit all skill levels. Lectures will be available during live streaming of the events and for 48 hours afterwards.

Link

Club Competitions

Complements to David Sisk for completing the judging phase of our most recent competition. He has circulated a note to all members with details.  The judging has been captured and is available at this link.

 

 

Details for the next competition will follow soon.

IPF Links & Events

 

Irish Photographic Federation Web Site:

https://irishphoto.ie/

IPF Shield to take place in November. Details circulated by email and above in the newsletter. 

Most recent news and articles posted:

https://irishphoto.ie/news/

 

Distinction Sittings and Availability:

https://irishphoto.ie/distinctions/assessment-dates/

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