May Newsletter

Nations Photography Club
May 2, 2017
3 min read

Hi, everyone!

Thank you so much for all your submissions in the March/April merged competition months, where the theme was architecture. We loved all of your submissions (which we are happy to say, have greatly increased in number, by the way!) and you have truly made it a difficult to choose, but unfortunately we had to select only 5 of them:

1. First Place: Davide Serrao.

2. Second Place: Oliver Moore

3. Third Place: Ana Van Der Ree

4. Fourth Place: Melissa Kaspar

5. Fifth place: Sophie Gunnenberg

While this month, there will be no prizes except for the showcasing of the above winners’ photographs on our website and on the school’s television screens, next month we are definitely giving a prize to the top three winners and the same goes for the month of June! Keep participating to find out more about this…

Next we would like to announce May’s theme of the month...and it’s a choice:

Either DREAMS or RED

You can choose which theme you want to do this month! Dreams can entail the images that pop into your head at night or you can represent your hopes for the future in your pictures. We usually don’t say this, but for the theme of ‘Dreams’, we will accept that you go crazy with filters, as long as they transmit the message of a dream.

For the theme ‘Red’, you can choose to feature a red object or you can put a red filter on a picture! Your choice… This month is very open-ended, but we would love to see what you can come up with!

TIPS:

Shadows and highlights: A tip we have is to use shadows or highlights to your advantage. By adjusting your aperture, ISO and shutter speed you can either lighten or darken your image.
Filters: If you want, you could create your own filters. We know this sounds confusing so below you can see a few ways of doing it yourself;
A first fairly easy idea would be a piece of coloured glass or acrylic over the lens of your camera or iphone to add a certain colour to your picture. This would be really cool for the theme red or creating the sense of emotion you felt in a dream (check out this link for DIY photo filters: http://content.photojojo.com/inspiration/photo-projects/ten-filter-ideas-on-the-cheap/)
Light painting: If you choose “dreams” (or even red) you can try something really cool called “light painting”. Light painting is a technique where you create (or paint) the subject of your picture using a handheld light while the shutter of your camera is left open for a long time. You could either move a flashlight or any other source of light in front of the camera or move the camera itself (zoom in and out, move it from left to right, etc.). If you choose to do the first one, make sure that your camera is stabilized (you can put it on a table or use a tripod if you have one). In terms of settings, make sure to use a low ISO (100 - 400) and set your shutter speed as high as you can (from 1s to 30s or even 60s if your camera allows it). You can play around with these settings - trust me, it will look really cool! Down below are some examples of light painting pictures we’ve taken in the past:

Light painting moving camera: