Oban Photographic Club

There was a good turnout of members to Oban Photographic Club’s weekly meeting, in the Regent Hotel, on Monday 20th February to hear the results of the “Mellow Yellow” competition. The judge was well-known local expert Frank Walton who gave a very constructive and informative assessment of the varied entries.

1st prize went to Ronnie MacKillop for a stunning close-up of a yellow dahlia flower.

Stephen Lawson gained 2nd with an image of a pallet of Mellow Yellow oil paint and 3rd with a yellow sports car. Ronnie received the Laird Parker Trophy as well as a voucher from Oban Photographic Centre.

The next meeting of the club is an “Open night” on Monday 5th March at 7.15pm for 7.30pm when the Royal Navy Photographic department will give a presentation. This promises to be a very interesting evening and everyone is welcome.

Neil MacGregor, from the Glasgow area, was the guest judge at Oban Photographic Club’s weekly meeting on Monday 13th February. Neil had the difficult task of judging the many entries for the “Landscape/seascape” competition; his comments and criticisms were constructive, helpful and enjoyed by everyone.

The results were almost a clean sweep for longstanding club member John Douglas, who had 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the Prints section and 1st and 2nd in the Digital images. Maurice Wilkins from Arduaine came 3rd in the Digital Images. John received the Gordon Sellars Trophy as well as voucher from Oban Photographic Centre.

The next meeting of the Club is on Monday 20th February. Results of the “Mellow Yellow” competition will be shown and judged by Frank Walton.

Members of Oban Photographic Club turned out at the Regent Hotel, Oban for their usual Monday evening meeting on 30th January to bring, and judge, entries for the Argyll Trophy. The subject for the trophy, which was donated by Peter and Katy Weir of Ledaig Caravan Site several years ago, was, as chosen by them, “Argyll Weather”. As can be imagined, the storms and severe weather we have experienced in the last year featured heavily!

1st prize was given to an image of the sun’s rays bursting out from behind clouds over Kerrera taken by Jim Kirkpatrick from McCaig’s Tower.

2nd prize went to an image taken by Maurice Wilkins of one of the storms hitting a headland near Arduaine Gardens.

3rd prize was awarded to Bob McCulloch for a picture taken during the hard frosts of 2011 and showed smoke-like mist rising off Oban Bay. Bob reckoned that the temperature was –16 degrees!

The next meeting of the club is on 13th February when the results of “Landscape/seascape” will be given by judge Neil MacGregor from Bearsden.

On 16 January we viewed images from all over the British Isles, from the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain’s portfolio including abstracts and landscapes to portraits and wildlife, presented in varying degrees of art or realism. As is usual in that kind of presentation, most of the images deserved to be included but members had doubts about a few of the rest! Photoshop, or its equivalent, use was clearly evident!

In the second half of the evening, member Tim Haynes gave an instructive talk and demonstration on black and white photography and how to process it digitally. As he said, it is really shades of grey varying from dark to light. This type of photography is becoming more popular and to see how to take a colour image and change it to Black & white was very interesting.

The next meeting of the club is on 30th January when members will themselves judge the entries for the Argyll Trophy. The subject chosen this year is “Argyll Weather” so some spectacular images will be on show.

Oban Photographic Club’s 1st speaker of the New Year was David McLellan of Carluke Camera Club with his subject of “West Highland Highway.”

David, who retired from his insurance business through serious illness, fought back to full recovery and now uses his love of the Scottish mountains to fund raise for charity. How about climbing 30 Munro’s in 16 days!! His photos, and narrative, of the mountains was truly inspirational to all.

Next meeting 16th January:-
Hand in Landscape/Seascape
PAGB 2011 disc & Monochrome presentation by Tim Haynes

Oban Photographic Club completed the 2011 season with a light-hearted meeting in the Regent Hotel on Monday 18th December.

The trophy up for grabs was the Dougie McIntyre Trophy for “Subtle Humour”. The entries were judged by the members themselves and the result was another win for Stephen Lawson with Maurice Wilkins, George Chalmers and Alex Clark as runners up.

Secretary, Katy Weir brought along some homemade mince pies, which rapidly disappeared!

The 2012 season starts on 9th January with David McLellan’s presentation “West Highland Highway”.

A good turnout of club members considering the appalling weather, gathered to hear the results of the Dusk to Dawn competition on Monday 12th December.
The judge for the evening was local professional photographer Cameron Harris.

Cameron started the evening by giving a talk on how to capture good dusk to dawn photos and using some of his own images as examples explained how best to set up your camera for this type of photography.
There were only 29 images entered for this competition; however after Cameron’s talk many felt they would now be able to take up the challenge of this subject if it was to be used again sometime in the future.

Following a short break for tea/coffee Cameron displayed the competition entries and explained how he had judged the entries and awarded the relevant marks.

Results
1st Stephen Lawson – Remembrance Evening – Sydney
2nd Ronnie MacKillop – www.visitoban.com
3rd Corinne Allward – Early Light, Arran.

Photos will be available for viewing in the Gallery section shortly,

Our next meeting on the 19th December will be the Christmas fun night and the in house competition for the Dougie McIntyre Trophy for Subtle Humour.

Our meeting on Monday evening, 5th December, was a presentation to club members by Alex Farquhar from Fort William, with a large and varied selection of his images from his travels and also his local area.

The first half of the evening Alex showed images from his trips to North America, Australia and Europe. The second part of the evening he concentrated on images from the Lochaber area.

Many of the images shown on the night are also available for viewing on Alex’s web site www.lochaberlight.co.uk
The club expressed its appreciation to Alex with a hearty vote of thanks.

Our next meeting, Monday 12th December is the results of the competition for the most commercially viable image – dusk to dawn. The judge for the evening will be Cameron Harris.

There was a large turnout of members, and visitors, to Oban Photographic Club’s weekly meeting in the Regent Hotel Oban on Monday 21st November. Douglas May, FRPS, a past president of Edinburgh Photographic Society and current chairman of one of the Royal Photographic Society’s panels of judges, came along to give the results of the “Abstract” competition. As well as judging the entries, Douglas gave an extremely helpful and constructive commentary on what an Abstract should be and where the entries could have been bettered.

Results Projected Images
1st Stephen Lawson (Circles) who also received the John Douglas Trophy for the best overall image.
2nd Jim Kirkpatrick (Water Colours)
3rd Ronnie McKillop (Sunrise)

Prints
1st & 2nd John Douglas
3rd Ronnie McKillop

Images are now available for viewing in the gallery section.

Our next meeting on the 5th December will be a presentation by Alex Farqhuar (Fort William) of his own images.

In association with

OBAN’S WINTERFEST 2011

BE OUR GUEST NIGHT
at the Club Meeting

Monday 21st November 2011 @ 7.30pm
in the
REGENT HOTEL, OBAN

ENJOY A SELECTION OF DIGITAL IMAGES AND PHOTO PRINTS ENTERED
FOR THE COMPETITION ‘ABSTRACT ‘
AND JUDGED ON THE NIGHT BY PROMINENT EDINBURGH PHOTOGRAPHER DOUGLAS MAY

Be sure to carry your camera at all times to capture the atmosphere of Oban’s first Winter Fest

obanwinterfest