18th Sept. creating an image

​Paul Kidd, one of CCC's best photographers over a number of years, presented "Creating An Image" to his fellow club members. Paul's opening image was a particularly spectacular shot of a red squirrel flying through the air in the direction of Paul's camera. His talk focused on the techniques he used to produce such amazing and competition-winning shots.
 
Paul explained that when he joined CCC in 2016 he had recently bought his first DSLR camera and had very limited knowledge of photography. However, he worked hard to improve by listening to and picking the brains of other club members such as Colin Livingstone and Bob Finlay - often in the pub after regular meetings. Another way in which Paul had enjoyed and improved his photography skills had been by attending photography trips of small groups led by experienced and professional photographers. Paul had benefited in this way by a Safari trip to Africa, as well as trips to Norway and Scotland.  
 
Paul exhibited many of his high-quality images and went on to outline in detail what had happened when he attended a recent trip to the Cairngorms, which happened to coincide with his 60th birthday. The professional photographer had taken his group to a number of remote locations where the objective had been to photograph local wildlife such as arctic hares, birds, grouse, deer and red squirrels. As it was his 60th birthday, Paul was loaned the use of a 600 mm lens by the professional which was great but very heavy for Paul to lug up the mountains along with all of his other camera gear! The professional had set up props in some locations which facilitated creating images of the wildlife. One example of this, although there had been numerous during the trip, had been the props used to photograph the flying red squirrels. The photographers were able to anticipate the behaviour of the squirrels and so set up their cameras on tripods and focus on the very spot where the squirrels would, hopefully, be flying through the air. Camera settings needed to be exactly right for the conditions, a great deal of time and patience was required,  and it was necessary to take multiple shots per second of the squirrels at very fast shutter speeds. Wildlife shots involved shallow depths of field, and it was also essential to achieve compositions with backgrounds which excluded distractions, such as trees or branches directly behind the animals.  
 
This was what Paul meant by "Creating An Image". Rather than simply taking photographs of landscapes or wildlife as they appeared opportunistically to the photographer, this was about creating the conditions through painstaking research, planning, organisation and patience to produce outstanding images "on purpose". Paul explained that since the Cairngorms trip he had continued to create images, using some of these learned techniques, when he was out taking photographs on his own.  
 
Paul's talk was successful in fully engaging the interest of our members and in providing us with entertainment and food for thought. We recognised that this approach was a step beyond what most of us normally followed and, as one member joked after the meeting, would involve him "going back to the drawing board!". It was all part of our learning curves as amateur club photographers. 
 
Ray Barnes
CCC Programme Secretary