Camera Club Talks and Lectures in Kent

This is an inspirational talk to help encourage members to reach the goals they wish to achieve. Darren shares with the club 3 RPS distinction panels, one of which did not pass.

Giving an insight into how he got into photography and his experiences Darren discusses his experiences in creating the panels and how the RPS and his network has helped him to achieve what a lot of amateurs wish to reach, to become a full time professional photographer.

The panel discussion and the showing of some of his hopefuls for the Fellowship take over the first half of the evening, with an extended tea break allowing the members to take a closer look at the work. In the second half Darren will show a selection of DPI’s on his most recent work, explaining the thinking behind each image and taking questions.

To get a feel of the type of imagery which will be shown please take a look at www.darrenwoolway.co.uk

This talk teaches members the different types of lighting and modifiers available and how to use them. Examples of lighting diagrams for the studio and on location are shown with pictures of each set up to show the effects.

Mixing ambient light and strobe light is a great and effective skill, an explanation is given on how to do this and how to meter for it.

If you wish a model can be used to show live some basic lighting techniques, the camera can be connected to a computer and a projector so that you can see the results live.

In the second part of the talk you will be given a walk through of Darren’s post processing techniques and workflow he uses for portrait images.

The presentation is a mix of Power Point and live shooting.

1st Half
Each year we photograph for Bacchanalia Masband at Notting Hill Carnival. Creating the advertising and event imagery we play a major part in their production. This talk aims to walk members through the process of how we found this contract, the conceptual ideas and the image brief to photographing to a template, post production, the event days and how the images are used after the event.

It is an interesting talk looking at the culture of carnival and includes a short video we made with Baccmass to try and explain what it is all about.

Sections include:

– Video explaining what a masband is.
– Where the contract came from.
– The initial brief and delivery of a concept.
– Planning and shooting the brief to a template.
– Delivery of the advertising images, expected formats.
– Event Photography Day 1.
– Event Photography Day 2.
– How the event images are used.
– Delivery of the event images.

2nd Half
In the second half Darren will show a selection of his recent work, most of which is automotive based, he will explain his thoughts and processes behind each image and will be taking any questions.

Compositing well is an important part of commercial or artistic photography, compositing badly can look terrible and obvious and therefore it is important to get this correct so that your image does not look like a composite.

There are quite a few rules on how to create a realistic looking composite, and this starts in camera. Looking at aspects such as lens choice, tripod heights, focal distance, angles and lighting this talk is a real eye opener.

The first half is a little shorter and is mainly Power Point and discussion, the second half is a demonstration of the techniques used in Photoshop and a few Plugins that make your life much easier.

This is something that everyone in the club should be able to do after seeing this talk, there is no need for fancy lighting as all can be done with ambient light.

The evening is split into two halves, the first half is a live shoot. A model will pose for 2 pictures which we will later edit into our floating person shot in Photoshop. We will light the model using artificial lighting as of an evening there is generally no ambient light present in the club halls. This will give an opportunity to see how some of the lighting equipment can be used. Images will be sent directly to the computer and then projected onto the screen so members can see immediate results.

A free step by step guide is available for download by all members.