It was good to see a good turn-out for the afternoon as we'd decided to have our first meeting of 2005 on the second, instead of first, Sunday in the month, hoping to make sure that everyone would have recovered from the Christmas and New Year festivities. The 2nd January seemed a little too close to the New Year!

The year got off to a good start with a visit from Stephen Dean, LRPS, from Pontefract who brought a number of his digital prints to share with us for An afternoon of Digital Photography.

Stephen's selection of prints, together with his commentary, was both interesting and informative, as he answered questions and responded to comments whilst showing us his pictures.

This month's meeting was the fourth, and final, Quarterly in the SLIC calendar. Our judge was to have been Ian Little from Southport but, unfortunately, he was ill and had to cancel his visit to us. We were fortunate that Ian Aldcroft, from Chorley, was able to step into the breach at very short notice and be our judge for the competition.

There were over 50 prints for Ian to judge and his comments were always both constructive and entertaining.

To see Ian in judging mode run mouse over picture.

The winning pictures can be seen on the Results page.

Our March meeting saw the visit of Cathy McKinty from Corby in the Midlands. Cathy is a successful photographer and artist who has written many tutorials for magazines and regularly sells her own work on the internet stock library, Acclaim.

She introduced us to the brushes and variations in Painter and then showed us how they could be used when working with a photograph. She went on to demonstrate how, using Photoshop, she'd given one of her own photographs the appearance of a Toulouse Lautrec painting.

Cathy then continued by showing us a couple of AVs featuring her own work and also a collection of her prints including a giant poster 5ft x 3 ft which was part of a commercial commission that she'd undertaken.

Our thanks to Cathy for what proved to be an interesting and entertaining afternoon.

Our April meeting was a members' day.

Sheila, Verna and Maureen shared their nail-biting experiences of last November when they submitted prints for the CPAGB Award. Pictures were shown and their slot ended with a short, tongue-in-cheek, 'fun' AV called Going for The 'C'.

They were followed by George Steele who showed us how he repaired and restored old and damaged prints, including many before and after examples for us to see.

Norman finished up the afternoon leading a discussion on using the music editing software, Audacity, with which soundtracks can be added to AV sequences. Incidentally, Audacity is a free download from:
http://www.audacity.sourceforge.net
It's user-friendly and can't be recommended too highly.

Our May meeting was the fifth SLIC AGM and also our first Quarterly Competition of 2005/2006.

The AGM was dispatched in double quick time, with no heated exchanges or blood spilled! Glasses were re-charged and we got down to the serious business of the meeting ie., looking at pictures!

Our Judge for the first Quarterly was Gordon Bartley, ARPS, from Preston whose primary photographic interests lie in aviation photography. A well respected judge and lecturer on the L&CPU circuit he was unsure of what to expect from the pictures in a SLIC competition but, hopefully, he enjoyed the experience.
His appraisal of the images in front of him was both informative and constructive. No-one could argue with his choices for the top marks nor for Maureen's Solitude as his 'Judge's choice'.

See the Results Page for more details.

SLIC's June meeting saw a visit from artist Carol Tipping who gave us a demonstration on how to use Painter ....... with the emphasis on applying it to our own photographs. It was a fascinating talk and geared to those of us unfamiliar with the software. Carol's talk was informative and easy to follow ............... and the time flew by.

Our thanks to Carol for an enjoyable afternoon.

This month's meeting was a 'home-grown' affair but, firstly, there was a presentation to be made. Chris Widdall received the trophy for gaining the highest aggregate score, for her prints, in the Quarterly Competitions 2004 - 2005.

First to take 'centre stage' was Bill Bagwell, recently returned from a holiday in India. He used the digital projector to share with us his pictures from the trip. Thanks Bill, for showing us such an interesting mix of everyday street scenes and famous sites.

Next up was Eb Swarbrick who showed us just what can be done with some Photoshop filters, particularly the polar co-ordinates. Easy when you know how! Thanks, Eb, for pointing us in the right direction when using these filters.

During the break we dashed downstairs to the bar (not just for the drink!) and caught up on the Wimbledon Men's Final scores. Afterwards Mike Lawrence took control of the laptop and took us through the intricacies of the 'bridge' in Photoshop CS2 ..... just when you think you're satisfied with what you've got! Thanks Mike - not the easiest job to make the 'technical bit' interesting but constant questions from the audience showed that they were 'keeping up'!

Finally, we rounded off a full afternoon with the slideshow sequence of the digital acceptances from the 2005 Rushden Annual Slide and Digital Competition (BPE). SLIC results are here and the full results can be seen on their website here.

Our meeting this month was held in the community centre at Edenfield as our normal venue is being re-decorated.

SLIC's 2nd Quarterly print competition was held at the August meeting and Tony and Marjorie Furmston, from Yorkshire, were our judges on this occasion. This isn't the first time that they've visited SLIC and, hopefully, it won't be the last ........ a visit from them is always welcomed.

The judging was joint and, where there was a difference of opinion on the mark, the average ruled! They didn't agree on which print should have the bonus marks but Maureen Glynn wasn't complaining as both those chosen belonged to her! Our judges' comments were interesting and often instructive, with many humorous little stories along the way.

Our thanks to both of them for visiting SLIC and giving us such an enjoyable afternoon

The September meeting was, once again, held in the community centre, at Edenfield.

Our visiting speakers, this month, were John and Margaret Sixsmith from the Wirral .................... both of whom are ARPS, AFIAP and, also, extremely well-known and respected natural history photographers. To maintain the interest and enthusiasm of an audience, for the whole of a sunny Suday afternoon, is a difficult task but one which the Sixsmiths achieved without any problem.

They brought a variety of wonderful natural history slides ranging from those of the tiniest fungus to birds of prey and wolves. Throughout the showing of the slides Margaret and John took it in turn to entertain us with stories of their exploits and share with us their expertise and tips on how we should be approaching this difficult area of photography.

Our thanks, again, for visiting SLIC and giving us a really memorable afternoon.

No picture this month .............. I forgot to take my camera!
November again and it was the third Quarterly Competition. Our judge on this occasion was Alan Tawse, a member of Stockport PS. (More detailed results with pictures of the higher scoring prints are on the Results Page)

There were over 50 prints for our judge to look at, pass judgement and comment, and he was able to include a personal little story with almost every one.

EB Swarbrick was delighted with the results .................. he had 3 prints that found favour with Alan.

SLIC members appear to be getting something right because, with several prints, our judge encouraged their authors to consider selling them as, "they'd look good on the wall," or they had other commercial qualities. Praise indeed!

Our thanks to the judge for an interesting afternoon.

Party time again! What can you say about parties, really? This one had plenty of laughter, food and drinks, and the afternoon passed on wings! Thanks to Maureen for preparing the food, to Helen and her mum for the quiz and to Jim for the brain-teasing puzzles that had some (most!) of us tearing our hair!

Just a few pictures to remind you! Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version.