The group meets in the 2nd Monday of each month in the United Reformed Church, Burnham on Crouch at 10am - 12 Noon. The photogroup is open to anyone with an interest in photography whether they are using an expensive DSLR camera or a mobile phone. Each meeting we have a topic to try and learn about an aspect of photography of interest to the members. For example, we have had sessions on outdoor portrait photography, using flash, and an introduction to digital post-processing. The group is open to new members of all abilities.

25th April 2023

On Monday 25th April, 8 members of the group visited Copford Church to view and photograph the wall paintings. We were met there by the Church Warden who told us a little bit about the wall paintings and how they were preserved by being lime washed over in around 1550.
The church was originally used as a place of worship by Bishop Anslem (who had a house next door) in about 1130. This explains why a small rural building was so richly decorated. The Victorians rediscovered the paintings in the mid 1800’s and removed the white coating to reveal the paintings.
The Church Warden also revealed a more gruesome piece of the church’s history when she showed us a piece of what is thought to be human skin, which had been found attached to the original door. The skin is thought to date to not long after the church was built and was probably from someone who was flayed as a punishment for desecrating the church.

13th September 2022

The chosen topic for this month’s meeting was ‘Macro Photography. One of the definitions of this is ‘where the images are those where the magnification of the subject is life-size or greater’ when filling the viewfinder. A few of us had brought objects that could be photographed in this way.
One way of achieving a macro picture is to use extension tubes between your regular lens and its camera body. We watched a short video of how these could be used.
A far better (and much more expensive) way is to use a lens that has been manufactured especially to be a macro lens.
Two of us had cameras with such a lens but Diane’s being of the longest focal length achieved the best results by far.
-David Gipson

13th July 2022

This month’s meeting was going to be a hot one!
I didn’t realise how glad we would be that I had taken a fan! this was to take photos of but came in very handy!
Our topic challenge was ‘Action’ – a continuation of a day out where we took fast shots and practiced “panning” at a motocross competition.
Out of several really good entries Tony Bridgman’s great picture was judged the winner.
After a bit of chit-chat/coffee and discussion on what we wanted to do it was suggested we tried “ghosting” a picture This was achieved by focusing on the main person and getting others to walk past at a fast pace whilst the shot was taken. If all that sounds a bit complicated, believe me we took a while trying to get our heads around it and there were several “deletes”!
As we all had different models of camera and different lenses we found no one setting fitted all, so much trial and error before we were happy with our shots. There was much laughter too as we ran back and forth trying to avoid each other. I know some of us learned new knowledge about our cameras helped by those that knew a bit more, but I think we all learned something and had a great time and got some great photos.
Following on from that we turned to the fan!
This was my original idea for our practice, but being a flexible group, nothing is set in stone and as long as everyone is happy with the ideas we run with it.
With a little time left we did decide to try and get a blurred and a static picture of the fan. Unfortunately the settings did need adjusting to make any pictures worth showing and maybe the background could be cleaned up with a backdrop but time was not on our side, practice for another time maybe!
-Dee Elliot