The Group met at 10:15 on 12^th February with the theme ‘Mood/Atmosphere’.

4 people attended as Mike Liberson had a hospital appointment.

Overall best picture was Rosemary Crumplin’s ‘Halo’.

Halos are a sign of high, thin cirrus clouds drifting 20,000 feet (6 km) or more above our heads. These clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos you see are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals. The crystals must be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, for the halo to appear. Rosemary’s photo was taken using her mobile phone – the phenomena is very transient, her husband John Clark was not quite at the same view angle and missed it.

The overall standard of the folios was very high (see Group Web page for individual samples) with different takes on the subject theme. The web page contains two pictures by John Hawke of the same trees that appear as one – a before and after following a recent storm – hence his title ‘Tragedy’.

The March theme is ‘Motion. John Hawke encouraged members to try various techniques such as panning, intentional camera movement, slow exposure, etc to create an impression of movement.

The Group met at 10:15 on 8^th January with the theme ‘Close Up’.

All 6 people attended.

Rosemary Franklin and John Clark did not submit a folio – for various reasons, they had a very busy December.

The theme gave members a great opportunity to play with the Macro settings (or Macro Lenses) on their cameras.

Overall best picture was Anjie Sargeant’s ‘Pussy Willow’ – again the overall standard of the folios was very high (see Group Web page for individual samples).

February’s theme is ‘Mood/Atmosphere’.

There was some discussion about further theme topics and John Hawke emphasised that members should look for photo opportunities during the next 6 months to fulfil future topics – noting, in particular, May’s theme ‘Bleak Open Spaces’ best taken in the Winter months.

Rosemary Crumplin reminded members that folios should only contain 1 archive photo to encourage people to submit new content – in response to the discussion that followed, John Hawke stated that the new content covered the period of all future themes.

The Group met at 10:15 on 10^th December with the theme ‘Twilight/Night Photography’.

All 6 people attended.

The group had organised a photoshoot on 24^th November to visit the Winchester Christmas Fair. We met up at 15:50 as planned to give us some ‘twilight time’.

Several pictures were taken in challenging light conditions but the session ended because it was very cold – two of us were somewhat warmer after sampling some Gluhwein!

Member’s responses to the theme were asked to include at least 2 pictures from the photoshoot. Overall best picture was John Clarks’s ‘Tree at Winchester Christmas Market’ although the overall standard of the folios was very high.

January’s theme is ‘Close Up’. John Hawke outlined some ideas for this theme that included macro, close cropping to enlarge, and telephoto zoom.