I would like to thank the past executive for the work they have put in this past year and thank the new executive for putting their names forward to keep the CPS running strong for another year.

    I have heard that the membership would like to get more educational value from our speakers. I will attempt to bring in speakers that have something to share, that we may all become better photographers. With that being said, I will be speaker this coming meeting on portable location lighting options. I will bring in a model and show some easy lighting set-ups and how I would process the files in Photoshop.

    I hope you can all make it to the meeting. See you there. As usual the meeting will be held at the University of Calgary room KNB129 starting at 7:30PM on Wednesday March 3rd 2010.

Scott Winter
President,
Calgary Photographic Society

P.S. The print competition theme is “texture”.

The first step in this is to colour profile your monitor there are a couple of ways that you can do this

Colour Profiling Hardware

There are a couple of main companies that do profiling hardware

Pantone

Spyder

Both companies provide hardware that will do a good job profiling and maintaining an accurate colour profile of your monitor under windows or Mac OS X.

Colour Profiling Software

I personally haven’t used any manual colour calibration but Dry Creek Photo that does the colour profiles for Costco has this page that explains a manual procedure. And they also have a large learning section located here that is a good primer for colour management.

The next step is to download the colour profiles for the Costco closest to you all the profiles are available here.

The final piece of the puzzle is installing and using the colour profiles. Again dry creek has a great page with a great instructions on how to do this.

I did mis-speak at the meeting about Apertures support for outputting colour profiled images. I just tested this and it does actually convert exactly the same as Photoshop does so anyone using aperture can screen proof and convert correctly.

• President – Scott Winter
• Treasurer – Mike Roest
• Secretary – Jeff Clement
• Events Co-ordinator – TBD

Anyone who is interested in filling the Events Co-ordinator position please come forward at the March meeting or email president_at_calgaryphotographicsociety.ca letting us know.

Hope to see everyone at the March Meeting (March 3rd 2010), with their prints for the theme Texture.

The print competition themes for 2010 have been posted and are available here.

The January CPS meeting will be held tomorrow, January 6th, at the usual place (room KNB133 at University of Calgary, in the Kinesiology “B” building).

There is no speaker planned but there will be a “Best of 2009″ where everyone is invited to bring their favorite shots of 2009 to present to the group. We’ll shut it down early and head out to for .

As a reminder our Elections are coming up in February and we are looking for nominations. The positions available are: President, Secretary, Treasurer, Events Coordinator.

Memberships are all up for renewal in February.

Scott Winter will be speaking about his photography.

The print competition theme is "Welcome".

George has published quite a number of articles in a number of prestigious fine art photography magazines (Black and White Magazine and LensWork Magazine, for example) and is the author “Take your Photography to the Next Level”.  He currently has another book in the works.  He’s also written essays on Luminous Landscape.

George recommended a number of shooting locations (and concluded that we, as a whole, need to get out more because there was not nearly the head nodding of recognition that he expected…):

1. Jura Canyon
2. Bad Lands (Restricted Area) near Drumheller
3. Independent Machinery in Inglewood
4. Pioneer Acres
5. Redrock Canyon in Waterton

George uses a number of software tools above and beyond the usual Adobe wares:

1. Helicon Focus – Focus blending software.  For landscapes where there are very close foreground elements George stitches the in-focus bits on multiple exposures to create a single image with almost infinite depth of field.
2. PTgui – Panoramic image stitching software.  Many of George’s landscapes are stitched from a large number of images (usually only one strip).

George strongly recommended subscribing to LensWork Magazine for any photographer who has an interest in black and white photography.  Their print quality is so good it gives a good benchmark for your own work.

Random Photoshop tip from George: Unsharp Mask (25,50,0) works great for increasing local contrast of an image.

– Jeff

I’m the judge for western Canada for this little competition:

http://www.facebook.com/Orangina

If you want to pass it along to the other folks or post it on your site that’d be great as I’m always looking to get the talent in Alberta recognized (and beat the East)!

The Calgary Zoo is hosting a garden photography workshop in early August.

"A garden is a setting for what can be an intensely personal aesthetic and even spiritual experience, in fact this is the intended result of a well-designed garden.  Can this be faithfully represented in an image?  This is the goal of learning to see as a garden photographer."

Allan’s course last summer was a big hit, so this year’s program is expanded to allow for even more time for photo shoots and critique.  In this workshop you will learn step-by-step how to see a garden.  With an emphasis on composition and hands-on instruction in the field, you will put your new way of seeing into practice in the gardens of the Calgary Zoo, as well as a selection of public and private gardens.

This course assumes participants are comfortable with the operation of their camera.  Please bring your camera (digital is preferred) and tripod to each of the photo shoots.  Off-site visits will be discussed and details provided at the Friday evening lecture.  Car-pooling may be an option.

Allan Mandell is an award-winning professional garden photographer whose images are published internationally in magazines and books.  For a sample of his portfolio, visit www.gardenphotographer.com.

Dates
Friday August 7. Saturday August 8 and Sunday August 9, 2009

Time
Friday lecture 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Saturday Photo shoot 9:00 am – 1:00 pm AND evening shoot and critique 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm Sunday morning shoot 9:00 am -1:00 pm AND critique and wrap-up 6:00 pm-9:00 pm

Cost
$325.00 per person

To register or learn more visit the Zoo’s website here.