OffShoot Photography Society

We believe that the image is everything!

News

Last Monday Night

Last week we had the week off. Hopefully, you all took the time to take lots of photographs!

Next Monday Night

Next Monday we have a talk titled 'Progress of Ellius Grace, young portrait photographer'. Ellius spoke to the club in 2019 about his photography and will present an update on his progress.

Congratulations

As you know Liam is both a well-travelled man and a superb raconteur. He is also a prize-winning producer of his own videos. Yet again Liam’s name appears as a winner with a trophy and certificate for best script in the AV National Championship 2021 for his latest presentation ‘From the Sacred to the Profane’.

 

Here is the video. Enjoy. 

 

Outings 

 

The next three club outings are as follows:

 

  • Tuesday 2nd November – Autumn Colour at Cloghlea.  We'll meet at 10.30 am. Please register on the club website.
  • Tuesday 9th November – Autumn at Mount Usher. We'll meet at 10.30 am. Please register on the club website.
  • Saturday 20th November – A visit to the National Art Gallery on Merrion Square/Nassau Street**

** The club outing to the National Art Gallery is specifically to visit the FREE exhibition called Picturing People’. However, you may of course visit other areas in the gallery with the exception of exhibitions that have a charge attached and must be specifically booked in advance.

 

To attend this outing OffShoot Members need to visit the Art Gallery website online and book a FREE GENERAL ENTRY TICKET to the gallery. PLEASE SELECT THE 11.00 AM TIME SLOT. Booking is now open and we recommend you book as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. (The purpose of this booking requirement is to control the numbers inside the gallery during any one-time slot).

 

The Outings Committee.

 

Accessing Video Recordings of Meetings

You can access recordings of past Zoom meetings in the Videos section of the Member's Area at https://www.offshoot.ie/member-area/. You will need to log in to the website to see the content of this section of the site.

Every member has a log in to the site. If you don't remember your login details go to https://www.offshoot.ie/login/ and select the 'Forgot your password?' link. Enter the email address you received this newsletter with and reset your password. Once you've reset your password you can log in and catch up on speakers you missed. Happy catching up!

This Week's Flickr Theme

Theme of the Week returns!

 

Our recent survey asked if you wanted to retain the weekly theme on our Flickr site. The answer is yes. For those who may not have engaged with this yet here's how it works. Each week a theme/topic is set. During the week you shoot or process an image in that theme. and load it on the Flickr site. One image will be selected as the "theme pic of the week" and published in the following week's newsletter.

 

Why bother? The theme pic gives you an opportunity to explore and try out many different styles and types of photography. It increases the variety of images on our site and is an excellent opportunity to expand your creativity and photography skills and you get your picture in the weekly newsletter!

  

Please note this is not a competition. The image chosen each is selected to encourage and inspire us. It may be the most technical but could also be selected as the most unusual, the most creative, the funniest or the one that appealed to us the most. The pictures are selected by a different member of the team each week to ensure varied viewpoints.

 

So to restart the themes -

 

Theme of the Week: Photo Stacking 

 

Photo Stacking involves taking several photos of the same subject with the camera on a tripod. The only setting changed from shot to shot is the focus distance. So your first shot is focused close to the camera and successive shots are focused further away for each successive shot. 

 

Then in photoshop or affinity photo, all the images are automatically stacked so that the sharpest part of each is selected and blended to give a single image with a huge depth of field, which you could not get with a single shot. This technique is mostly used in landscape, macro and astrophotography. It can also be used for star trails and HDR images and for these you don't even need to change the focus.

 

A beginners guide to photo stacking:

https://digital-photography-school.com/a-beginners-guide-to-focus-stacking/ 

 

Focus stacking with Lightroom:

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/focus-stacking.html

 

4 ways to use photo stacking:

https://www.lightstalking.com/4-ways-to-use-image-stacking-to-create-better-images/

 

The following are the theme titles for the next 5 weeks if you want to start practising:

 

In the style of Ray Metzger

Formal Portrait

Rule of odds

HDR

Dragging the shutter

Club Competitions

Our next and final competition of the year is called "Autumn Colours”

 

You can interpret the theme as you wish from falling leaf colour, portraits in the landscape, shooting low down to capture fungi and other natural wonders, or wide angle to capture a more expansive landscape.   The possibilities are endless so use your imagination and experiment.   You can use almost any lens from a Macro to a Zoom so there’s something for everybody.

 

Our Judges for this competition are Eamon and Christine O’ Daly from The Outdoor Studio.

 

Have a look at Eamon and Christine’s websites www.outdoorstudio.ie and www.skerriesphotography.com

 

Please submit your images by Midnight Sunday 14th November. Judging will take place on Monday 29th November 2021.

As usual, save your images in JPG format, and name them with your Level Number, Membership Number, and image title –

 

example L2-987-Autumn Leaves.jpg

 

You may submit two images for this competition, to make sure that everybody receives useful feedback Please upload your images to the dropbox link:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/request/LyWxUgcbcGiOCmGN2kgq

  

If you have any questions, please contact competitions@offshoot.ie

 

To give you some advanced warning, the first Club Competition for 2022 is proposed to be an Open Theme competition for Monochrome images. The entry date will be in late January – full details to follow in due course

What's On

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.]

Jamnik Church, Slovenia by Mary Hahn

Fungi at Massy's Estate by Trevor Stafford

From the OffShoot Website
Club Outing - Scotsman's Bay 'Harvest Moon'
On Wednesday 20th October a good number of members gathered in Sandycove to see the Hunter’s Full Moon rise, as a glowing red ball, from the sea to the east…
Read more...
Club Outing - Oldcastle Point-to-Point
On Saturday 25th September 6 members arrived at the point-to-point event in Oldcastle. The weather was perfect and we all made our way around the course looking for a good…
Read more...
Interesting Videos

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

PiXimperfect: Photoshop 2022: 9 New Features with Pros & Cons!

Greg Benz Photography: NEW: Lightroom / ACR Masking 2.0

IPF Links & Events

Irish Photographic Federation Web Site:

https://irishphoto.ie/

Most recent news and articles posted:

https://irishphoto.ie/news/

Distinction Sittings and Availability:

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

Facebook Twitter Instagram
OffShoot Photography Society
newsletters@offshoot.ie
© 2021 OffShoot Photography Society and the Individual Members where their images are used.
Modify your subscription    |    View online