Close voting in monthly photo competition
Mullingar Camera Club notes
At the last meeting Mullingar Camera Club had their first monthly photo competition. For this, each member was asked to submit one colour and one monochrome print for viewing by other members.
The prints were laid out for viewing and each member was asked to select the best photo (no member was to vote for their own work). With the standard of photography, high it was no surprise that the votes were very close.
In the colour category there images stood out, a landscape photo of a waterfall taken by Michael Lonican, another landscape photo of a church reflected in the water taken by Noel Murphy and a macro photo of a butterfly and flower taken by Hugh Logan.
In the monochrome category images of thistles taken by Marian Heavey, Still life photo of a kettle being poured into a cup taken by Anna Allen and an architecture photo of a building in Dublin taken by Colm Kerr were the standout photos.
Following the review of photos, club chairperson Noel Murphy provided an introductory presentation to studio lighting for portrait photography. Noel outlined the five basic lighting positions used with one key light source, namely Rembrandt, Split, Broad, Loop and Butterfly, assisted by Seamus Carr, who sat in as a model.
Rembrandt lighting is predominantly characterised by a lit-up triangle underneath the subject’s eye on the less illuminated area of the face (fill side).
Split lighting is a lighting technique that lights up half of a subject’s face while leaving the other half in a shadow, essentially ‘splitting’ the face, while Broad lighting is a type of lighting setup where the area of a subject’s face that is facing the camera is lit more brightly. The term ‘broad lighting’ comes from lighting the broad side of a subject’s face.
Loop lighting is a lighting pattern that creates a circular shadow on the subject’s face just under the nose, and Butterfly lighting is a portrait lighting pattern where the key light is placed above and directly centred with a subject’s face. That creates a shadow under the nose that resembles a butterfly. It’s also known as ‘Paramount lighting’, named for classic Hollywood glamour photography.
At the next meeting the club will put into practice what members have learned so everyone one is reminded to bring their cameras and tripods.
On the alternate Wednesday committee member Colm Kerr held a Photoshop workshop in the club room. Among the topics covered were how to open/import a RAW image into Photoshop, and a simplified workflow which included how to use the crop, clone dodge and burn tools in addition to some work on layer masks and sharpening.