June Guest Speaker

Photographer Sarah Millan will be speaking to us about her photography.  Check out her superb landscape and portraiture work on her website.

Newsletter Contents

• Review of Ed Spiteri, May's guest speaker.
• May print competition results
• That's about it

Spring has Sprung!

Well… Hopefully we've seen the end of winter.  Once again, I've procrastinated in writing up the newsletter.  If only I had got after it earlier, I wouldn't be couped up inside while the weather is so nice.

In addition to allergies, mowing the lawn, sunburns, and hot sleepless nights, June marks the end of our regular meeting program until September (Ok.  So I'm a closet summer grinch).  The July and August meetings will be in the form of yet to be disclosed outings.  Please keep an eye on the website for updates!

May Guest Speaker Review -  Ed Spiteri

Photo by Jeff Clement

Our planned presenter for the May meeting had to cancel at the last minute and Ed Spiteri stepped up to the plate.  Ed has spoken to CPS in the past (November 2006) and was gracious enough to speak with us again.  Ed had brought along some photographs to show but due to technical issues (lack of projector sort of stuff) he was unable to show his images.

Ed had worked for the Canadian Film Board for years.  He's done a lot of traveling, published a number of books, and held a number of solo exhibitions.  Ed was involved with the creation of "Between Friends ", a bicentennial gift to the Americans from Canada (funny side-note: Ed tells us that the maps were so good in this book it became unofficially known as the "Drug Smuggler's Guide"). Ed's work is also part of the National Photographic Collection of the National Archives.  The main topic Ed spoke about was his street photography work.  Ed is one of the founding photographers of that genre (at the time there were about six of them in North America shooting that style).   

Ed did a lot of work in London in the 60's.  The street people were always surprising.  Ed recalled one instance where a man shining shoes for change was also wearing Britian's second highest military decoration.  Ed has some of these photos available to view on his website.

Ed does most of his photography with a small point in shoot camera (Pentax 21-90mm, 800 ISO color film).  There is no sense scaring people with a "big crap ass camera".  Besides, things are different these days.  The people on the streets can be more dangerous.  Lugging around thousands of dollars of camera gear is a good way to get mugged.

"Back up when doing street photography", says Ed, "the subject is important but so is the environment".  Sometimes it's worth carrying around some change to hand out to the homeless in exchange for some photographs.  Dogs and cats can also be a great way to break the ice with a new subject.  First ask to shoot the animal, shoot if for a while, and then zoom way out.

He related a few dangerous brushes while out on the street.  Ed says, "Attitude is everything on the street".  If you act like someone that shouldn't be messed with, people will probably leave you alone.  Easy for him to say when his career choices were apparently photography and fighting    I don't think any amount of attitude will make by skinny computer programmer self look frightening!

Editors Note: It seems that most of the group forgot about the important third part of our meeting at the Kilkenny.  Myself, Tony, Scott, Ed and Ryan were the only ones of the bunch to make it out to the Kilkenny.  You guys are missing out on some great conversations! 

Ed, thanks for your time!

Check out Ed's work on his website:

• http://www.spiteriphotoart.com/

May "Open" Print Competition Results 

Advanced Category 

Advanced Open – Scott Winter – Falls

 Intermediate Category

Intermediate Open  – Helmut Schoderbock – Going Fishing

 Novice Category

Novice Open  – Kyle Johnson – Pointing Toward the Sky

Novice Open  – Jeff Roest – Market Day

May "Theme" Print Competition Results: "Paper"

Advanced Theme

Advanced Theme – Tony Field – Paper

Advanced Theme – Scott Winter – Paper Airplane

 Intermediate Theme

Intermediate Theme – Stephen McCracken – Paper

Novice Theme

Novice Theme – Mike Johnson – Paper Covers Rock

Upcoming Print Competitions Themes

Web Crawl 

British photographer Platon has some amazing work including portraits of Putin, Obama, and other politcal types.

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!

Also a reminder that July and August are not normal scheduled meetings.  They will be held as off-site workshops.  Check back on the site for details.  Also, no newsletters until September.

– Jeff