Our highlight competition, Print Of The Year (POTY) competition was held last night, with our judge Grahame Dunkin giving his experienced critique on the excellent images submitted. Congratulations to Dave Turner for his Monochrome image of the year: West Pier Watchtower - Whitby, and Graham Harrison for his Colour image: Hairy Shield Bug.

Good Morning All Last week we went to have a look at the Lancaster sculpture at Norton Disney, it is open for visitors at certain times and although work is still ongoing the main Lancaster is finished and a car park in place. The sculpture is full size weighing 100 tons and honours WW2 RAF crews. Last week at the club Derek Smith ran an editing night, members were asked to bring their laptops in and Derek gave us all an SD card with some images to edit and information regarding the free editing software. A different and interesting night and hopefully we all learnt something and anyone new to photography would have learnt quite a lot. Thank you Derek for running the evening. This week, Wednesday 11th February, we have one of the clubs yearly highlights, the Print Of The Year (POTY) competition to be judged by Grahame Dunkin, all the entries are now in and you should have checked the scoresheets to make sure yours are included. Dave Turner is also asking for prints to enter into the Foster Challenge and LPA Print Battles. He will ask to use prints that are in the print of the year but if you have any prints that you think would be good to enter in the two competitions please bring them and hand them into Dave Turner. The following week we are having an evening collecting everything in for our exhibition at the Louth museum, if you can sort out any prints especially local prints that could go into our exhibition please bring them in on the 18th February. Regards Graham

Last Sunday I was in Stockton on Tees working with Izzy, a favourite model of mine she enjoys cosplay, that’s dressing up as a character from Marvel, Hasbro, or film titles. This photo is of Fey, a woodland sprite, pictured against a woodland backdrop that I bought for the photoshoot. I stayed overnight at a Premier Inn, and in the morning drove to Staithes, as I had always wanted to visit this fishing village, Staithes in the February rain wasn’t much fun, and the tide was out, but I did manage to take a few photos, and I captured one for the “Water” project so I was pleased with that. I was quite surprised how vibrant the colours were in the drizzle, and misty light. Driving back over the North Yorkshire Moors in rain, and fog, didn’t allow for much photography either. Yesterday, walking along the harbour front in Bridlington the high tide, and strong winds had thrown lots of debris onto the promenade, seaweed, nets, tree branches, and cuttlefish kept council workmen busy clearing up the mess. With the right clothing, and a weatherproof camera photography can still be enjoyed even in poor conditions.

A photo editing workshop was held last night, with members bringing in their laptops, and post processing sample images. Members were able to practice processing bracketed, and focus stacked images. Simple editing tasks of cloning unwanted items from images, cropping, and resizing of images were shown. The excellent FastStone photo viewer, and editor was able to accomplish most tasks apart from developing of RAW images, this free software is a “must have” for those with Windows computers. The Affinity photo editor has now been acquired by Canva, and the changes applied by Canva have made the software very confusing to use, and on my 14” Lenovo Thinkpad, it was very difficult to view the master layer to apply adjustments. PhotoScape X is a simplistic photo editor, for all that the software was easy to use, and the RAW processing was seamless. It was an interesting evening, and hopefully members will have attained some new skills in post processing, some of the images edited are shown here.

Good morning All I did manage to get to visit Gibraltar Point last week, very few birds to photograph at this time of year but I took a few and a Grey Squirrel. Last week member Dave Mann showed us photographs from his visit to Beamish, it's a great day out and Dave went round most of it and showed us some photographs from the new 1950's town as well as the farm, pit village, town and trains. Thank you Dave, and Harry for helping out with refreshments. This week, Wednesday 4th February, Derek is running an editing night, he has sent us all information on what we could download, if you have a laptop remember to bring it along. Print of the year is fast approaching, if you are entering make sure you send Dave Turner a list of your entries with which subject they are in and bring your prints along this week. Regards Graham

Fed up with watching the rain coming down, I set out yesterday into the rain to Normanby Hall to try and get a photo for the “Water Project”, I have one potentially good image, but I always like to see if I can get something better. My OM Systems OM-1 camera, and 12-40mm Pro lens are weatherproof, but obviously I wasn’t, but really lovely to get out.

Last night Dave Mann gave an excellent talk on his visit to Beamish in May last year. Dave explored much more of the Beamish site than when I visited in April last year, Dave mentioned the difficulties of getting on some of the vintage transport around the site, I experienced the same during my visit. It's a fascinating historic working museum and well recommended for a visit. Many thanks Dave for an entertaining evening.

Good Morning All Last week at the club we had our yearly project night, last year it was one photograph a month with the same focal length, there is a full report on the evening on our blog page, but four members did last year's project with newer member Sam Collet showing photographs at the club for the first time, some excellent photographs taken in Japan. It would be good if a few more members took part this year, just one photograph a month with the subject being water. Attached is my January photograph from last year, it would work for this years project as well. This week, Wednesday 28th January, our catering manager Dave Mann will be having a week off and showing some of his photographs. His presentation will be a mixed bag of photographs. Don't forget to send Dave Turner an email with your titles for the print of the year. Entries will need bringing in on the 4th February. Regards Graham

We held our "Project Night" last night, the theme being "Prime Time", one photo each month taken over the previous 12 months, using the same focal length "prime" lens. Myself, Harry Kerman, Keith Rossington, and Graham Harrison, had each completed the project and were able to show their results as projected images at the meeting. The results of the project were very interesting, seeing how each photographer had approached the theme, and their interpretation of the project. I have posted here one image from each photographer. The evening was rounded off by one of our newer members, Sam Collett, displaying some of his images taken on a visit to Japan, his wildlife photography was stunning in detail, and quality, well done Sam.