As the holiday season continues apace, many members of Irvine Camera Club are getting out and about either on their own or on our regular organised photo walks. Over the last couple of weeks our club has had mini-excursions up to Glasgow and, somewhat closer to home, to Dean Park in Kilmarnock. We are featuring a selection of photos from those trips this week.
Much of the joy of photography is in the quest to show the beauty in the ordinary. We don’t always need a spectacular location to produce interesting images. A good photographer will notice the way light plays on a scene and how the lines and shapes in the frame work together to produce a composition that says something to them.
We always try to encourage all of our members, whatever their experience, to really think about what they are seeing and how they want to show it to the world. It is very easy these days to become obsessed with the technology. Modern cameras are so good now with a seemingly endless list of features buried in menus and buttons. Many of these gadgets are very useful and do a marvellous job of helping you to produce technically superb images. What the camera can’t do, however, is to compose the image for you and choose the precise time to press the shutter button to capture the moment in time that the photographer considers to be the decisive moment.
The technology is there to help, but it can’t make meaningful photographs by itself. The photos that really grab the viewers’ attention are usually the ones that come from the heart. The images that demand our attention often tell a story, express an emotion and give us a little glimpse into the photographer’s mind.
Of course, these skills take years of practice to master and most keen photographers will tell you that it is journey that never ends. I think that being a member of a good camera club is a fabulous way to motivate and inspire yourself to find your photographic eye and to develop new ways of expressing yourself through your images.
If you would like to find out more about Irvine Camera Club please visit our website at www.irvinecc.co.uk
