The upcoming February 6th meeting:

The guest speaker for this meeting will be Tatiana Zamachnaia.  Tatiana will be speaking about her work exploring the Painting with Light genre.

Membership fees are due this month and they will be $30 for individuals or $40 for couples.

The annual executive election will also be held this month.

And more stuff in the Newsletter

• The 2007 print competition award winners
• More information on Exposure 2008
• Summary / review of Jose Guillen’s presentation from the January meeting
• The results from the January print competition
• and more!

CPS Executive Elections

February is election time and we have a great opportunity for those of you with a bit of time on your hands and a desire to be more involved in the society!

A number of positions have become vacant:

• President
• Secretary – Treasurer
• Monthly Program Director (although Scott volunteered to help someone with this)
• External Program Director

So please make sure to be at the February meeting and, if you have any interest in any of the positions, talk to someone and get yourself nominated!

2007 Awards

The print competition awards for 2007 were presented in the January meeting.  Awards are given to the member who has accumulated the most points in a given category over the year.

Top Row (left to right): Ryan Pahl, Helmut Schoderbock, Norm Capper Bottom Row (left to right): Jeff Clement, Tony Field Photo by Wes Devauld

Community

Exposure 2008

As has already been mentioned on the website, Exposure 2008 is underway.

The main Exposure 2008 website is located here (http://www.exposurecalgarybanff.com/ ).

You can also view the Calendar of Events (4.3MB PDF) .

Dan Gordon has passed on this invitation to his exhibition (Observations: Time and Place) at the Fourbyfive gallery in Art Central (downtown Calgary).   Opening reception will be held on Feb 9th from 2pm to 5pm.

A local artist is looking for a digital photography mentor (she paints pictures from her photographs).  She is looking for someone to help out on either Monday, Wednsday, or Friday during the day.  She is not looking for a large time commitment (even just once a month to give some pointers, etc. would be great).   There is a possibility of pay although that is would still have to be ironed out.  This woman is in a wheelchair and getting around the city is difficult so it would be ideal if she could meet at Mt. Royal College.

If anyone is interested please contact Jeff (me) (jclement at calgaryphotographicsociety dot com) and I’ll forward on contact information.

February Guest Speaker

Tatiana received her first art lessons at the age of 4 from her father, who is a renowned landscape artist. Further formal training in arts built a solid base for strong composition and colour scheme that Tatiana deploys in her photography.

Painting with light is a fun way to explore “flashlight brushes” when she doesn’t paint on canvas.

Tatiana is a Mentor for a Photographic Society of America in the light painting category.

Although landscape photographs from her brief daytime photographic explorations have been acclaimed and published, she is almost 100% nocturnal these days.

Tatiana believes that Light Painting as an art form has not been duly explored yet, and she is compelled to push Light Painting to the new frontier.

Homepage: http://www.tatianaphoto.com

Galleries: http://www.tatianaphoto.com/photoalbum.html

January Guest Speaker Review – Jose Guilien

Photo by Jeff Clement

In January we had the pleasure of speaking with Jose Guillen, a long time member of CPS, about his photography and his recent exhibition the “Eight Photo Exhibit”.  Jose is one of very few members who shoots B&W film and does his own black and white printing.

Jose started photography when he was eight and is mostly self taught.  In 1994 Jose had to choose between photography and model trains as a hobby.  I certainly think he made the right choice in sticking with photography!  In 1996, Jose’s wife suprised him with an enlarger (this really was a suprise since Jose didn’t know how to print).  Luckily Jose had a friend, Charles Hope, who spent an afternoon with Jose and showed him the basics of how to print.  Jose did a few prints and won a competition, got hooked, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Jose described some of the creative control he has in B&W.  The choice of films, papers, chemicals, enlargers all can be used to produce different effects.  Over the last 10 years Jose has experimented with a wide variety of films (including infrared), papers (most of the prints he showed us were on paper from te 70’s), chemicals, etc.  He has also started using a process called Lith printing that produces very surreal and extremely high contrast images.  Jose had a couple lith prints to show us and they were quite spectacular.

In November 2007 a dream came true for Jose and his work was featured in an exhibition of 8 photographers.  Jose shared with us a bit about the experience and a lot of tips on entering work in an exhibition.

Having myself dabbled in B&W printing and then let it slide after the purchase of my DSLR I’m finding myself once again flipping through my archive of prints and fondling my trusty old film cameras.  Thank you Jose!

Jose has made his speaker’s notes available here.  In his notes, Jose shares with us a number of magazines and books that have, and still do, serve as inspiration for him.

– Jeff Clement

January “Open” Print Competition Results

Advanced Category

Advanced Open – Bob Lee – It’s a Tough World

Intermediate Category

Intermediate Open  – Jeff Clement – Morning

Novice Category

Novice Open  – Alex Beraru – Puppy Portrait

January “Theme” Print Competition Results: “Red”

Advanced Theme

Advanced Theme – Tony Field – Lips #1

Advanced Theme – Scott Winter – Red Balloons

Intermediate Theme

Intermediate Theme – Ryan Pahl – <untitled>

Novice Theme

Novice Theme – Mike Johnson – Red Sky

Upcoming Print Competitions Themes

Web Crawl

Tony found this new series ( an Introduction to Composition) on the Luminous Landscape website.  Their plan is to produce eight essays on topics like “Traditional and Untraditional Rules of Composition”, “Composition using Color”, “Composition using Light”, “Composition in B&W” and others.  It’ll be an interesting resource to watch as the essays become available.

Jeff bought one of these inflatable flash diffusers in a fit of poor judgement.  They are even worse than they look!  Not only do they not stay on the flash but they look rediculous and *they don’t diffuse the flash noticeably*

Neil Koven sent this link on the work of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii , official photographer to Tsar Nicholas II.  Many of Sergei’s photographs were taken in triplicate using three colored filters and then were re-combined using s special projector with filters to create full color slideshows.

The weblinks archive can be found here.

Also.  For any members with websites that would like them listed, please e-mail the URL to me at jeff.clement at calgaryphotographicsociety.ca.

That’s All Folks!

Thanks everyone!  See you on the 6th.

– Jeff