This years outings will take place on the first Saturday of May, June, July & August.  We will meet at the club rooms at 8.50 am to leave at 9.00am sharp, we will decide at the end of each day whether to have a meal locally or to go straight home.  Groups can arrange to travel together beforehand or lifts can be agreed on the morning before we set off, contributions towards travel cost are left up to the individual.  The cost of each outing is £4 per person.

Please remember that the outings are not restricted to club members, friends and family are very welcome.  If you are a visitor to this web site and have not come to the club yet you are welcome to join us to meet us before the commencement next year’s program.

 

3rd May                           CASTLEWARD HOUSE
There is a speciality market and demonstrations of crafts on at Castleward on this date, we will have our morning coffee in the house.  As we are not allowed to photograph inside the house the club will only pay for admittance to the grounds, members who wish to tour the house can pay for this separately

 

7th June                           HIDDEN HISTORY OF SOUTH ARMAGH
Sean Barten will conduct us on this trip to some lesser known sites.  As on the trip Sean organised last year Sean will provide coffee at our first stop. 

This is just a wee note about the run around South Armagh wot Im planning for June. We will meet in Newry at whatever time suites the group I suppose 9.30am or 10am?

The first thing I have to ask is rather important. Can we do this trip on Sat 7th June rather than Sat 1st as I will be in England on the latter weekend. I hope this doesn’t throw a spanner in the works as regards the club timetable? It was something I’d forgotten completely all about and didn’t realise that Saturday was on the first. I hope this don’t muck things up.

My trip planning software tells me its just over an hour’s drive from Bangor to Newry. We will meet up at the car park of a shopping centre just on the outskirts of town. (I’ll get details, maps and directions sorted out soon and pdf them so that they can be stuck on the website and folk can print it all out)

A 5 min drive takes us to Bernish viewpoint which looks out over the town and half a mile away is Ballymacdermot court tomb which is a nicely maintained prehistoric site on the roadside where we could have a cuppa and admire the countryside. There’s some nice images of it here…

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1627/ballymacdermot.html

From there we head in the direction of Sllieve Gullion and just 2 miles from Ballymacdermot to Killevey old Church. Here is a site with a few facts and pics to give you an idea of it.

http://www.ecclesiasticalireland.org/killevy/index.html

Just another 2 miles down the road is the entrance to Slieve Gullion Forest Park and mountain drive. I reckon we should be arriving here before 12pm. I suppose depending on what folk prefer they can take a stroll through the woodland from the carpark area first ..

http://www.walkni.com/Walk.aspx?ID=351

…Or just continue the drive around the slopes of the mountain. It’s a 4 or 5 mile drive, all one way on a good tarmac’ed road with numerous places to park and stop. There are some astounding views.

I suppose when we first enter Slieve Gullion park we should arrange on a time to meet at the exit and that will leave people free to do their own thing. So depending on time of arrival we could leave an hour and a half or what ever we decide on the day.

The next stop is about 7 miles further on and it would be best to follow the leader on this stage as its not the easiest to find and most GPS devices omit a few roads that we will be driving on.

Castle Roche is just over the border in Co Louth and to be honest puts the likes of Dunluce in the shade.

These 2 sites give an impression of the scale of the monument.

http://www.faughart.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dee2808/2379807645/in/set-72157604224352284/

Roche is the only stop on the day’s outing that requires a degree of mobility. The 5 minute walk from the side of the road is steep enough at times but its worth it.

When we finish at Castle Roche it’s a half hour drive back to Newry where I will suss out a suitable venue for a bite to eat.

 

5th July                            CARRICKFERGUS CASTLE AND GLENOE
We will start at Carrickfergus Castle and move on to Glenoe to photograph the village and waterfall, after Glenoe we will return to Bangor for a barbeque at 15 Lord Wardens Avenue.  We hope to start eating about 6.00pm and all club members, wives, husbands etc are welcome even if you are not able to come to the outing.
Basic food and soft drinks will be provided, those who want to bring their own steaks etc or alcoholic drinks are welcome to do so.  It would help with the catering if those coming would advise David at d.best@tiscali.co.uk
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COME EVEN IF YOU HAVE NOT ADVISED DAVID IN ADVANCE.

 

2nd August                       DAYLIGHT FLASH ON THE NORTH COAST
This trip will be led by Chris Roberts.  At some stage in the day Chris will give a practical demonstration on the use of flash during daylight.  DIRECTIONS AND MORE DETAILS WILL BE PUBLISHED ON THE WEB SITE CLOSER TO THE DATE.

The Northern Ireland Photographic Association

Top print and Slide Competition
&
Distribution of Prizes

Belfast Royal Academy
5-7 Cliftonville Road, Belfast BT14 6JL

Tuesday 27th May 2008, at 7.30pm

Guest Speaker and Judge

Professor Paul Seawright

Professor of Photography, University of Ulster

The Top Print and Slide Competition will be held on Tuesday 27th May 2008, at Belfast Royal Academy Note this new date. Paul Seawright had a previous commitment for the old date.

As well as judging, Paul Seawright will also give a presentation at this event. To say the least, it is quite a coup to have Paul Seawright for our Top Print and Slide event. A Google search returns over 3,000 entries, and Paul even has his own entry in Wikipedia, which makes fascinating reading. Thanks to our President for persuading Paul to judge and talk.

PLEASE ENSURE A GOOD ATTENDANCE FROM CLUB MEMBERS

All starred Prints and Slides must be with Brian Mc Kenna or Peter Wilkin before Wednesday 7th May. Please check that all your starred entries are available. If you are not sure contact Brian or Peter (contact details in NIPA Directory). A reminder that smaller starred prints may be resubmitted (if identical) as 20x16.

Entries are also required by 7th May for selection to represent NIPA at the PAGB Inter-Federation Print Competition. 20 x 16 prints should also be sent to Brian McKenna or Peter Wilkin. Please urge your club members to ensure that we have a good choice of prints from which to select.

The next Council meeting will be hosted by ENNISKILLEN on THURSDAY 29th MAY. Note the change of date and venue. A map to the venue will follow later. In order to assist catering, Enniskillen have asked for an idea of numbers likely to attend. If you will be attending this Council meeting please let me know ASAP

 

Landscape Photographer of the Year, Your Chance to win £10,000

Visit http://www.take-a-view.co.uk for details.

RSS Subscriptions

RSS Explained

What is RSS?
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are an easy and efficient way to recieve notification when new information is available in a specific area of interest.

How Can I Benefit From RSS?
RSS feeds save time, allowing users to receive notification only when new content is available. Web site visitors choose the information they wish to subscribe to and can unsubscribe from any feed at any point.

How Do I Subscribe to RSS Feeds?
First you will need an RSS feed reader (also called a news aggregator) there are a number of RSS readers available. A short list is available at http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-software.htm

RSS readers are simply programs that display the contents of an RSS feed in an easy to read format.

Once you have an RSS reader you simply click the icon or a link to the RSS feed and paste it into your RSS reader. Some readers will auto detect the presence of an RSS feed on a website and you can optionally choose to subscribe.

Newsgator Online is simple and free to use. All you need to do is to enter the Bangor and North Down Camera Club website URL http://www.bangor-camera-club.co.uk after selecting the Add Feeds link on the reader. The reader will add this to your list and will be automatically updated.

 

The Great British Cup, Digital Project Competition.

The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain(PAGB) recently held their first digital projection competition. PAGB expected about 50 club entries but actually received 143. Clubs entered 2860 images for this very first PAGB inter club projected image competition. The judges, Peter Cheetham APAGB from the N&EMPF, Rikki O’Neil MPAGB EFIAP FRPS from the SPF and Richard Spiers DPAGB from the NCPF were impressed with the quality of the work. Each of the three judges gave a score of 2 to 5 to each image. The maximum score for each image was therefore 15 and the maximum possible club score was 300.

We only had a week to get our entry together yet, despite this, we scored a decent 168 points, (the winners scored 249 and the lowest score was 140.) Not bad for our first attempt in this type of competition. I have prepared a gallery of our images and the the individual scores they received.

Congratulations to Harry Pettis for getting an '11' and to David Foster, Mark Allen, Glorija Perry and Gerry Coe for getting a '10

To find out more click here.

Mark Allen, Competitions Secretary

ePHOTOZINE announces an exciting new dimension to our online photography portfolio – ePHOTOzine.tv

Bringing a new dimension to online photography, ePHOTOzine.tv offers:

• Videos from professional photographers and tutors
• Our pick of the best online photo videos
• ePHOTOzine.tv produced tutorials and reviews
• Audio visual treats uploaded by members

To tune in now please visit www.ephotozine.tv

If so then you are in for a treat! How would you like a set of FREE presets that will work with Adobe LightRoom and Adobe Camera Raw? All you have to do is complete a few details on the link at the bottom of this item and away you go... But before you do here is some more information.

"Many photographers are experiencing the power and flexibility of the recently released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, a breakthrough image management and processing tool designed for photographers. To expand the creative possibilities we are pleased to offer PhotoPresets with One-Click Wow! a dynamite collection of development presets created by renowned Photoshop educator, author and photographer Jack Davis. And the best part is the price, free.

"As a creative professional who understands the necessity of producing beautiful work, delivered on-time and on-budget, I am always looking for better tools and easier ways to work with Adobe Photoshop and it's related software products. I feel fortunate to have teamed up with the great onOne Software gang to bring you these custom Wow Presets for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom that I believe will not only save every digital photographer both time and effort, but also help them instantly create work with that extra Wow Factor."

Designed to work the way you work, the PhotoPresets with One-Click WOW! tackle only one development parameter allowing you to optimise your image at each step to create the look you really want without sacrificing any quality. Rather than bloated presets that control all the variables at once and make adjustments that you may not like and you have to hunt down to fix. You start with adjusting your images colour and tone and then can add effects like black and white conversions, tinting, split-toning and vignetting. With 85 presets in 6 categories the number of combinations is astounding. Here are some examples of what you can do with PhotoPresets with One-Click WOW!"

Use the following link and select the 'free download' link at top right, you will have to enter your email and details of your operating system. Note that there are downloads for Windows and Mac - for both Lightroom and ACR .Click here to find out more.

The results of Club / NIPA Round 5 (22.2.08) have been published here. The Colour Cup and the Black and White Cup Competitions are now closed and the results can be seen here. I would like to thank members for checking their results. There were some typos and addition mistakes - next year we will be moving all this to a spreadsheet!

There is only on more competition (Audrey Argue on 14..3.08) to go, please note that entries should be submitted on Friday 7.3.08. Remember all winning places of this competition will only go towards POTY, as the Colour Cup and the Black and White Cup Competitions are now closed.

Bangor and North Down Camera Club featured again at the annual NIPA Audio Visual Festival. Last year club member Jack Thompson won 'best first time entry'. This year club member Mark Allen took 1st place (in the Novice section). His show "Norway" can be downloaded here. [Note that this is a zip file and will require a program to decompress it. A FREE program that decompresses 'zip' and 'rar' files can be downloaded from here. The resulting exe file will run on all Windows based computers. ]

We had a good entry for our panels competition on 8.2.08, there were 6 'Advanced' and 6 'Foundation' panels, all of which are can been seen in galleries below. The Club thanks all participants and our outside judge, Terry McCreesh. To find out more and see the galleries of all entries click here.

We have some camera club members that are under 25. For older members perhaps your children might be interested in this. For some even older members perhaps your grandchildren might be interested in this.

IRIS -25:
International Review of Images with Soundtrack, for Under 25 year olds.

Introduction:
A new competition organized to promote and encourage the interest and growth of digital Audio Visual photography among young people, as a creative discipline using still photographic images.

What is involved ?

You will need to create a digital Audio Visual sequence of less than 10 minutes.

Credit will be given when judging, for work which shows

* good photographic skills

* creative use of a soundtrack which may contain music, voice, sound effects or a mixture of all

* An interesting use of combining these elements to form the final Audio Visual sequence

* The sequence may be created using any digital AV software which produces a stand alone exe file which can be viewed on any PC, for example using software such as Pictures To Exe, Wings Platinum, M. objects, Flash, ProShow Gold.

The organizers will accept other AV software programs on condition that they will work on the computer equipment provided for judging.

Categories

* Single author under 16 years old.

* Single author aged 16 to 24 years old

* Group entry - by young people aged under 16 years

* Group entry - by young people aged 16 - 24 years

If the group is aged under and over 16 years, entry should be to the category of the oldest group member on April 21st 2008.

Entrants do not have to be members of the Royal Photographic Society.

Schools or colleges are encouraged to submit individual and/or group entries from their students.

Mr Igor Kokarev, of the Pictures to Exe Software company has made available free software for any individual or group entry.
Please contact the Organisers of the IRIS-25 if you wish to receive the free key to PTE software to enter this competition.

Photodex, the company which produces Proshow Gold has also made available vouchers for a 20% discount on their software.
Please contact the organisers of the IRIS-25 for more details of the necessary key to purchase at this discounted price.

A Special Prize will be awarded to the school or college with the maximum number of entries

Cash prizes awarded for each category.

A couple of excellent articles and Tutorials on Flash Photography including off-camera and remote wireless flash included in the tutorials on the Photographics Links Page

We are considering an' Audio Visual' section to the web site. Many members have produced and displayed their 'Audio Visual' shows to the Club. The Web Team would like to now if club members would be willing to have their Audio Visual shows included on our web site. If you are interested please let us know. [We can arrange hosting, all you have to do is give us your AV.] We are also aware that some members have their Av's on You Tube, we would be happy to link to them.

We have placed all details about non Club Competitions on a new page. It can be accessed from here or from the menu on the left.

The programme is in Adobe Acrobat PDF Format...
Download PDF