Archive of photo-sharing themes Sept 2021 - Aug 2022
Thursday 9th September 2021: Our theme for the summer break was "Landscape", and we will be sharing photos on this theme at the meeting. In the art of the Romantic period, landscape was classified into 'Pastoral', 'Picturesque' and 'Sublime', and we will see if our photos fit into those categories, or whether perhaps we need other categories for our photographic art.
Thursday 23rd September 2021: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "A summer outing". You are invited to share photos of any interesting place you enjoyed visiting of the past few months.
Thursday 7th October 2021: This photo-sharing theme is "Fruits of the harvest". As always, we interpret this quite liberally, to include fruits of all kinds, including berries and grapes, plus autumn vegetables and other produce of the fields, gardens and woods.
Thursday 28th October 2021: Our theme for this meeting is "Minimalism". We are all quite familiar with the idea of minimalism in interior decoration, with its emphasis on simplicity, clean lines, elimination of everything that's not essential, and a muted colour palette. The same ideas are popular in photography too, and people often declare that "less is more!" Even if you are not a minimalist by nature, it's good discipline sometimes to create photos that are all about simple and elegant composition, rather than about the objects themselves.
Thursday 11th November 2021: There will be a talk by Alan Cowman at this meeting, so time for photo-sharing will be more limited than usual. We plan a short photo-sharing session on the theme of "Abandoned".
Thursday 25th November 2021: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Tombs and cemeteries". We generally go for up-beat, entertaining themes, but once in a while maybe it's good to try something a bit more sombre. Besides, churchyards can often be very beautiful places...
Thursday 9th December 2021: The theme for this meeting will be "The poetry of autumn".
Thursday 6th January 2022: We will share our "Best photos of 2021". It's up to you what you mean by "best", but you might choose them because they did well in expressing what you felt when you took them, or maybe because you would be happy to hang them on your wall, or perhaps because they captured moments that were particularly important to you. Please come prepared to tell us why you chose the ones you did.
Thursday 27th January 2022: Our photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Old family photos". The idea here is to dig out a few photos from your family albums (or shoe-boxes) and tell us something about what they mean to you and the occasions when they were taken. We are particularly interested in old photos, because we want to discuss how styles of family photography have changed over the years. Of course, time in the meeting will be limited, so you'll need to be selective. Bear in mind too, that the images will be shown on-screen, so you'll need to have them in digital form. If you're starting from old prints, the easiest way is just to take digital photos of the prints - that usually works very well, so long as you do it in good light, and avoid shadows.
Thursday 10th February 2022: On this date, we had three talks based on photos taken by members of our group in India.
Thursday 10th March 2022: Our photo-sharing theme for this meeting is "Old houses". As always, you are free to interpret the theme in any way you wish. For example "my old house" could mean "my ancient, historic house" or it could mean "the house I used to live in".
Thursday 24th March 2022: The theme for this meeting will be "Plastic". With ever more frequent reports of the environmental damage being done by plastic waste in our oceans, rivers and lakes, it seemed a good time to highlight the role that photography can play in drawing attention to the issue. Needless to say, you are more than welcome to show us photos illustrating any aspect of plastic that you wish.
Thursday 7th April 2022: This meeting's theme will be "From an unusual point of view". The idea behind this theme is that if we want to get and hold people's attention, photos taken from an unusual viewpoint can often be more effective than the conventional eye-level, straight-ahead perspective. Looking upwards can sometimes give us a completely new view of the world, but there are other possibilities, like the low-level view that we all used to see as young children.
Thursday 28th April 2022: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Man's best friend". Not all of us are cynophiles (no, I didn't know this word for a dog lover till I asked Google), and this theme is certainly not intended to be restricted to friends called Rex or Rover. You are welcome to show us your feline friends or friends from other species, or indeed whatever beings may be called to mind by the theme "Man's best friend".
Thursday 26th May 2022: On this date, we will share photos on the theme of "The poetry of spring". We had a successful theme last Autumn, when we shared photos on "The poetry of autumn" and members were encouraged to accompany their images with a suitable poem. Some of us even came up with several poems! The idea of "The poetry of spring" is similar, and is an opportunity to celebrate the joys of spring, with particular attention to flowers, but not restricted to that. Please do come along prepared to recite one or more suitable poems.
Thursday 23rd June 2022: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Food photography". As always, you are free to interpret this theme as you wish, but you can take it as a particular kind of still-life photography, in which case you may wish to consider the artistic aspects, such as composition, complementarity of colour and texture, lighting, etc...
Thursday 14th July 2022: The theme for this meeting will be "Pink". The idea here is to share photos that prominently feature the colour pink. The subject itself can be anything you wish - pink clothes, pink flowers, pink hair, pink clouds - the sky's the limit. It is sometimes remarked that pink is a typically female colour, but it seems that this idea started only in Victorian times - you may be interested in this history of the colour pink.
Thursday 28th July 2022: On this date, the theme will be "Devon villages". We recently organised a photo-amble to Lustleigh village and we encourage people who participated to share photos that they took. But for those who were unable to come on that photo-amble, we welcome their photos from other Devon villages.