PROGRAMME
This page gives information about meetings in the period September 2023 - August 2024. You can find information about meetings held in earlier periods by clicking on any of the following links:
All meetings are held in the Wesley Room at the Mint, unless otherwise noted.
Please note: For all meetings, an email reminder is circulated a few days before the meeting. There may occasionally be zoom meetings, in which case the email will contain the link needed to join the meeting.
Thursday 28th September 2023 at 2pm: There will be a short talk by Kris Frank about "Photography and UK law". The photo-sharing theme for the meeting will be "Shells and fossils" - please bring some photos you've taken this year or from your back catalogue, or even go out and start hunting for them now if you don't have any and you have the time.
Thursday 26th October 2023 at 2pm: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Music". Members of the U3A Music group have been invited to the meeting, and other musicians and music lovers will also be welcome to come along and see how we have approached this subject (you need to be a member of U3A, of course).
Thursday 23rd November 2023 at 2pm: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Colour - gold".
Thursday 7th December 2023 at 2pm: This meeting will not be held in-person, but will be a virtual zoom meeting. You can join the meeting online by clicking on the link sent by Kris Frank in his email of 26 November. The photo-sharing theme will be "After dark". In addition to giving us a chance to share our night-time photos, this meeting will also be an opportunity to discuss the challenges of taking good photos under low-light conditions. Suggestion for how to approach this are in Kris' email.
Thursday 25th January 2024 at 2pm: The theme of this meeting was "Home movies - from then till now". As emphasised in Kris' email, you didn't have to be a film-maker for this, because amateur efforts at any level were more than welcome. Your videos could be anything from family movies from your childhood all the way to recent movies around the house or garden or the place where you live.
Thursday 22nd February 2024 at 2pm: The meeting started with a forward look from Kris about meetings of the group over the next few months. In preparation for the March meeting on the theme of "A sense of history", Kris also gave us a short talk about the use of "In-painting" in the Affinity Photo app for removing unwanted items from your photos. This was followed by photo-sharing on the theme of "Abstract", intended as an exploration of what we mean by "Abstract" in the context of photography.
Thursday 28th March 2024 at 2pm: The photo-sharing theme of this meeting was "A sense of history". There were two suggested ways of approaching this. One way was to take photos of an old building, street or artefact that takes your fancy that gives us a real sense of history, preferably from a period before World War II; if there are intrusive modern elements in the scene, you are encouraged to eliminate them using Affinity in-painting or its equivalent in another post-processing package. Another way of approaching the theme was to take photos at home or in a museum or other place, again evoking a sense of history from before WW2.
Thursday 25th April 2024 at 2pm: We usually set a specific theme for sharing photos, but on this occasion it's "Anything you like" - in other words please show us anything you have found particularly interesting or entertaining. As part of this, Claire Edey plans to whisk us around the world looking at exotic plants and trees that have jumped out at her in her travels.
Thursday 23rd May 2024 at 2pm: The photo-sharing theme for this meeting will be "Spring unfolding". The idea here is to illustrate the changes as spring develops from its first shoots and buds to its full efflorescence, so you are encouraged to get going with your photos well in advance of the meeting!
Thursday 27th June 2024 at 2pm: We will share photos on the theme of "Need for speed". Sometimes it can be very important to pay careful attention to the shutter speed used in capturing your shots - this is true if you are photographing fast-moving subjects, such as running or dancing people, or flying birds. In such cases, it will often be appropriate to use "shutter priority" on your camera. You are encouraged to show us shots that you captured using this technique.
Thursday 25th July 2024 at 2pm: For this meeting, the photo-sharing theme will be "Dartmoor", and you are invited to show us photos from anywhere in the vast wilderness of our nearby national park. We plan to link this theme to the technique of "Aperture priority".