The Group met at 10:15 a.m. on 20^th January with the theme ‘Past Holidays’.

Only 5 people attended – with such a small number, a unanimous vote for best picture was given to Pam Liberson’s ‘Fighting Monkeys.’

The theme and date were changed to accommodate Anjie Sargeant’s date for her second hip replacement. ‘Past Holidays’ was a departure from the group’s usual practice of a theme that encouraged people to go out and take recent pictures. All the photographs submitted were of excellent quality and the stories behind why they were chosen proved both interesting and entertaining – one was taken over 40 years ago!

Because of upcoming long term treatment for Pam Liberson – effectively reducing the group to only 3 people – it was decided to postpone the February meeting until March.

Apart from lengthy discussions of health problems, Mike Liberson and John Hawke  examined the difference between bracketing exposures (for enhancing dynamic range) and focus stacking (to provide greater depth of field). The use of presets were also explained with particular reference to editing in programs such as Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Pro.

The Group met at 10:15 a.m. on 11^th November with the theme ‘Creature Feature’.

Only 4 people attended, Rosemary Crumplin sent her apologies for not attending.

With such a small number, a unanimous vote for best picture was given to Pam Liberson’s ‘Snail Close Up’ – the snail was held in her hand to get the picture. One of John Hawke’s pictures was of a large spider in his bath – the high definition of the hairs on its legs exposed Anjie Sargeant’s arachnophobia!

Snail Close Up – Pam Liberson (taken on Mobile Phone)

December’s Theme is ‘Quirky’ – a theme suggested by Rosemary Franklin (who may not attend the next meeting due to ongoing health problems). There was an intensive discussion about what could be considered as quirky – at one point Anjie Sargeant used a dictionary (did not help!)

Both Pam and Mike Liberson were having difficulties with Windows 11 after upgrading from Windows 10.

The first problem was not recognising photographs held on a USB stick – solved by using File Explorer: Highlight the USB Drive (E:/) and drag on to the desktop or right click on the folder and use copy and paste – the problem here is that Windows 11 has an abbreviated listing so one has to click on ‘More Options’ to reveal the Copy and Paste functions. One can use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V shortcuts which takes out these extra steps.

John Hawke also showed how to assign default apps for specific file types by going into ‘Settings/Apps/Default Apps’ and scrolling down to ‘Choose defaults by File Type’. He showed the examples of setting default apps for .jpeg and .tif files – by double clicking/opening the file it will be automatically loaded into the preferred photo app.

Pam Liberson was able to print e-mail attachments but could not print photographs. Investigation showed that her laptop had two default printers – one for direct connection and one for wifi – both the same printer! The wifi printer had a notification that the driver was not valid. Using Device Manager and updating the driver did not resolve the issue. No solution was found on the day.