In the Herald - Our documentary pics so important

Last week saw a really good turnout for the Irvine Camera Club evening outing to Lynn Glen.  We gathered at the car park just outside Dalry and headed off to explore the glen, lured by the sound of the Caaf Water as it tumbled through the rocky gorge.

As usual we had set our keen photographers three challenges to complete during the course of the evening.  Perhaps the most unusual of those was to employ a technique called “intentional camera movement”, or ICM for short.  This is where the photographer deliberately moves the camera during an exposure.  The results can be variable, but when it works well the results can evoke memories of impressionist paintings of the likes of Monet, Pissarro and Renoir.

Another challenge was to show contrasting ideas in our photography.  The fast-flowing water provided plenty of opportunity to show wet & dry, rough & smooth and still and moving.  These were by no means the only contrasts on offer and some of the club members thought out-of-the-box to make less obvious compositions, such as Debbie Andrews’s clever inverted lens ball shot of a tree and Tracy Ross’s delicately taken macro “Soft & Sharp”.

For a change we set the third challenge to document the proceedings themselves.  It’s a well-known fact that we photographers prefer to stay behind the lens, but on this occasion, we asked the club to take some photographs to document our visit to Lynn Glen.  These images don’t necessarily have the same artistic merit of some of the more creative shots, but the documentary style is an important aspect of photography.  These are the images that will have more significance in the future, allowing us to look back, hopefully with fondness, on the evening and to remember the people we were with as life started to get back to normal.

Irvine Camera Club will continue to meet up during the summer months.  If you would like to come along and join in we would be really happy to see you.  You can find out all about the club and what we are planning on our website www.irvinecc.co.uk