It’s is easy to get sucked into trying to take and make great images with no “judge bait” , and a wow factor which makes the image stand out. When you get one, it’s great of course - something to be proud of and something which should do well wherever you use it. Going out with you camera with this goal in mind inevitably leads to disappointment - “ I didn’t get anything. No keepers. “ You’ve spent a good deal on camera equipment, made the effort to get out and about - and wh

High Cup Nick, a new location for me having never visited the area before. Plenty of long distant vistas towards the Lake District hills, and the North Yorkshire Dales as well as the nick itself. Good walking track access from Dufton where parking is available. The route takes you via the Pennine way climbing steadily all the way until flattening along the edge of the "nick". Return is via the same route, or longer circular route options are available. Typical featureless no

Junction 36 Photo Club It is official, Holme and District Photographic Society, following a unanimous vote (only one "no", and one abstention) its membership has decided to rename the club the "Junction 36 Photo Club". So why the name change? Firstly, many people who liven the local catchment area do not know where the village of Holme is. (Me included when I was first introduced). This was shown to be apparent during the past two Northern Photographic Show exhibitions at

CALLING ALL MEMBERS: If you have some of your best work we can use on the website could you email them to me. Jpegs only please, don't need to resize as I will do that before uploading. Perhaps digital copies of your Rheged prints. The website is in need of some fresh work to display so lets get some of our best photos up there and show the competition what we are made of.

The program for next seasons HDPS meetings and nights out is now up online. A downloadable and printable PDF copy is also available at the bottom of the same page. Let everyone know, have a good summer taking plenty of photos, and look forward to seeing everyone in September.

Hi all Many thanks to all who came to the AGM - we had a good discussion and as a results will be running one themed competition next season, and re-introducing the Panel competition as requested. For those who had a top three finish in any competition category this season, there is a certificate for you to collect sometime - I will take them to Rheged. For Rheged, please send you print titles to Alex Bradley. If you have not handed in your prints, please take them to Rheged

The next DIG NW Centre meeting on the 12th. May. This time the venue will be: Frodsham Community Centre, Fluin Lane, Frodsham, Cheshire WA6 7QN. This time the speaker is Rob Knight and he will talk about Lightroom. The cost of the meeting is: £8 for DIG Members £10 for RPS Members £11 for non RPS Members. Payment can be made on line or pay on the day with cash or cheque. If you pay on the day please let me know so that I can add your name to the list. Please bring your ow

Some guidance on how club members can be given access to the competition entry system and enable them to enter the annual Lancashire and Cheshire Photographic Union individuals competition.

What a fascinating talk we had by Mark Large on astrophotography. I knew you needed some specialist equipment and knowledge, but I was quite blown away with the overall complexity and patience required to obtain some of those stunning deep sky images. It was a real shame on the night that the very technology that drove telescope, pointing and tracking control and sophisticated CCD cameras, was unable to communicate with our humble club projector. Hats off to Mark for being a

Hi all, I hope you enjoyed the excellent prints shown by Diane Owens on Friday night. Textures were certainly the theme of the night and we can discuss these if you wish at the next training night (22 March ) which will focus on photoshop and our image portal L&D images. Next week is Mark Large with Astrophotography which I sadly will miss unfortunately as I know nothing about it. Friday is also the deadline for pdi submissions on a stick on the night or by email to holmephot

Lancashire and Cheshire Photographic Union The PAGB Master of Prints Exhibition will be on show at Wilkinson Cameras Liverpool branch from the 4th March 2019 for four weeks. This is a prestigious exhibition showing sixty quality photographic prints from top UK amateur photographers and is well worth a visit. There will be an official opening at their store at 7.00pm Friday 8th March 2019. All are welcome. Please tell your members Wilkinson Cameras 4 Bold Street, Liverpool,

The closing date for entries into the L&CPU Audio Visual competition is Sunday 27th January - by which date it is hoped that we have a good crop of AV sequences to show our judge, Richard Brown FRPS, from the Midland Counties PF. The judging takes place on Saturday 9th February commencing at 10am and we hope for a good audience to be in attendance to hear the judge’s constructive comments on each sequence. The competition is free to enter and free to attend and there will als

An alternative to Adobe for your image processing and editing. Affinity Photo is a UK made by UK software company serif. It is a very powerful, non destructive processing and editing piece of software and it costs currently, a one off payment of, £48.99 for a desk top version, or £19.99 for an iPad version. It has an excellent built in offline help feature. Plenty of online tutorial content too. Help videos on both Youtube, or if you want fewer adverts, Vimeo, and the videos

Last night we saw some fantastic prints and Pdi's in this years mono competition. Well done everyone and congratulations to Howard for winning both the print and PDI sections. It was also nice to hear a few new names being awarded highly commended, just goes to show members photography skills are being improved by competing and receiving constructive feedback from the judges. It was also nice to see images that had been taken on some of the clubs "Days Out", they are another

There are three common filter types used in photography, especially landscape photography - the ND grad to balance exposure between sky and foreground, the ND to slow shutter speed for blurring clouds and / or flowing water and waves, and the circular polariser. These filters can be used either in a square system such as the Lee, or screw in. For the Lee system you need a holder adaptor ring for each lens, the holder itself with slots built in, and then the filters can be slo

Thanks to Howard on a great piece on Macro Photography, and Micromacrography. The results he achieved with a simple set up at home were quite amazing. As Howard said, as the long winter nights draw in and the weather outside is not conducive for photography, there are plenty of things indoors that can keep you busy photographically speaking. Here is what can be achieved using the techniques that Howard described when you have access to the Oxford University Entymology Dept...

Firstly, thank you to all those who contributed on the night, with both questions and answers. Being able to share our combined knowledge, be it an in depth technical subject like macro focus stacking to a simple tip on how to use an ND grad and polariser filter together, it all helps to keep us interested and inspired, get the best out of our equipment, and hopefully, make us all better photographers. Notes on Focus Stacking. Focus stacking starts when you set up your camer

They say, "you can't see the woods for the trees". When standing in the middle of a woodland trying to fit a whole tree into the shot is impossible without including some sky. The sky will inevitably end up being the brightest part of the image making the trees look dark. That might work in some photographs, but not when you're trying to capture the last of the beautiful autumn colours. So, instead of using a wide angle, why not try using a longer focal length lens and exclud

It’s the glass that counts  - a personal view. by Tim Hancock, Chairman. Camera manufacturers have long marketed their latest digital cameras with emphasis on the number of Megapixels, and its hard not to be convinced that 30 megapixels is not better than 20. It probably is. But is it really the most important thing to concentrate on? Along with the number of megapixels,  we also get lured into the sensor size temptation. Isn’t full frame (FF) better than APS-C which is turn

Not image resizing again I hear you cry!! With five spare minutes, you can load this little action into Photoshop and never have to worry about getting your DPI (Digital Projected Images) the right size ever again. The first prerequisite is you must have a copy of Photoshop. A bit of background follows..... As you edit an image Photoshop keeps a record of what has been done (History) which allows you to go back to an earlier state if you make a mistake. However, assuming no m