2011 and all that

We've had a cracking 2011 with loads of group shoots and plenty of other activity this year.  

January

We started with a very early shoot at the beginning of January to blow away the New Year hangovers at Curtain Road studios. Great attendance and we got to see all the Christmas presents everyone had received (or bought themselves).

There was also a Bridal shoot at the end of the month.

And to top that Konrad became a dad in January too.

February
In Feb we managed two events, a group shoot at Holborn Court and a Photoshop training day for 10 members of the group.

March
Like The Jam we went underground at Waterloo station.

April
April saw two mini group shoots in various parks in London.

May
A group shoot on Hampstead Heath. Who would have thought it could be so cold in May!

June
A group shoot on the Thames Beach.













In July and August it seems that everyone went on holiday!

September
Another month with two events. We had a group shoot at Croxley Green and we also had our first group exhibition. You can still see the images here…











 

October
October saw out first "Tutorial Shoot". This should become a feature of the group shoots over the next year.

November
In November we went to Clerkenwell House for our final group shoot of the year.

Many thanks to Gavin, Tyla, Jonothan, Ghene, Karen, Philip, Simon, Paulo, Scott, Gary and Craig for organising all of the above.

There were also numerous smaller shoots and people teaming up to help each other out over the year. In particular we should mention Emil for organising several training shoots for new members of the group and in the process raising a lot of money for Yulisa.

We managed to have a social nearly every month including an excellent critique night organised by Mr Dawes. We even managed to get to a few exhibitions too.

And there's more… Tim Saunders drove to Mongolia in an ambulance, Paulo shaved off his beard and then grew it back again all in the name of photography mens dangly bits and Lucy cycled across Cambodia and Vietnam!

Several people got some wider recognition for their work. Jaroslav had an excellent write up on the Strobist blog and John & Tina Reid had a guest slot on Scott Kelby's blog. Many other people in the group also had work published or exhibited.

Congratulations to everyone concerned. You make this a fantastic group with your active participation. Here's looking forward to an action packed 2012.

October Social Date Moved

We have moved the date of our October social to Wednesday the 12th October and will be meeting at the wonderful Knight's Templar pub in Chancery Lane, pictured above. Scott will be bringing the prints from our exhibition so if you would like to collect your framed prints, see the prints, or just come down for a natter, please come along. If you are coming, it would be nice if you could let us know in the flickr Thread

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London Strobist Group Exhibition

Its finally here. We are showing an exhibition of our member's work at the Harrow Arts Centre

At the end of 2009 we asked people to submit three photos each for entry into the exhibition. Once all the entries were in on the 1st of January 2010 we asked a panel of 4 judges to select 40 images for the exhibition. The Strobist himself, David Hobby who needs not introduction here. Commercial Photographer and Author Kirk Tuck. Freelance photographer and Vice Chairman of the British Press Photographer's Association Neil Turner. Finally freelance editorial photographer Tom Miles.

With the images selected, the next step was to organise a venue and the printing. After much procrastinating on my part we finally settled on a venue this month and Phil and Scott rose to the occasion and got everything organised in record time.

Many thanks to the selection panel who had to wade through all of the images and especially to Phil and Scott for doing all of the hard work over the last two weeks. It wouldn't have been possible without them

Please come and visit the centre and have a look around. The images look really great in print, so much better than on a computer screen.

Harrow Arts Centre
171 Uxbridge Road
Hatch End
HA5 4EA

Rail: London Overground from Euston or Watford Junction to Hatch End
Tube: Harrow on the Hill or Pinner (Metropolitan), Harrow & Wealdstone (Bakerloo), Stanmore (Jubilee)
Bus: H14, H12 & 182
Road: A410
Parking: Limited free parking is available

London Strobist Social - Wed 10th Aug - The Swan - Hammersmith

Every month we have a social in a pub somewhere in London. Its an opportunity for members to meet each other outside of the madness of a group shoot. The is a chance to have a chat about gear, discuss ideas, talk about the direction and organization of the group and gossip about people who aren't there.

Typically people will arrive around 6:30pm and we will have a few beers and food together before stumbling off into the dark.

This month's social is on Wednesday the 10th August at The Swan in Hammersmith. Its very close to Hammersmith tube and popular with our South London members.

Please let us know if you are planning on coming along, as we don't like sitting in the pub on our own, and sometimes numbers are quite low. You can find a sign-up thread on our flickr group

July Group Shoot - The Boot Camp Bash

Something a bit different for the July group shoot. Details as follows…

The plan is to meet in Central London at 5pm on Saturday 30th July, split into groups of 3 or 4 and go off and photograph one or more "Objects of significance" to the community.

So that could be...

Broadwick Street cholera pump
Landseer's Lions
A drinking fountain
A cab rank cafe (The old wooden huts)
Poplar Baths
Manhole covers (veastry of Islington electricity supply)
postboxes
Red telephone box (with the less common pattern - and yes, i am leaving you to work out what that means)

Or something else - you can come up with your own ideas.

For those of you who read the Strobist blog you will know that this is the current boot camp assignment. You will have until 5pm the next day to submit your image to the main Strobist pool if you are so inclined.

If you want to take part in this meetup please go to the sign-up thread on flickr for more details

Critique Night One: Done and Dusted

Image Credit: Orash Rahnema

Well, we have successfully hosted our first critique night which was pretty good fun really.  In all about half a dozen photographers submitted work. Given that this was the first ever event of it's type for the group I thought that was pretty encouraging.  In all we had about twenty people in for the social, and given that I arranged it Hammersmith again this felt like a result.

As I expected the images were all of an excellent standard and for me personally my criticism largely came down to nit picking.  Simon kept on shouting that he liked a lot of the work (his) and I think we all got to talk about the various images.  Personally I learnt a bit from speaking to the photographers and doing a bit of reverse engineering with them.

I would like to say a massive thanks to Dan, Huy and Emil for taking the time to offer their opinions on the work.  I would also like to thank all the photographers that submitted work because without then we would not have had anything to look at.

During the evening I met and fell deeply in love with a Cornish blonde  but she hurt me the next day, these things happen.  Until next time, Take it easy. I know you will.... (Yeah I nicked that from the Big Lebowski.)

Our sparkly new Critique Night

Many of you will already know from the May Social thread on our Flickr page that we are planning our first ever critique session.  It seems we take a whole lot of pictures, put them on Flickr and get a couple of "oohs" and "aaahs" and then forget about them.  Well it's time to see if we can do something a little differently.  We shoot. We have socials. So lets put the two together and see if we're still all talking to each other at the end of it!

The idea is that you are invited to submit up to four images that will be discussed by a selected panel of "judges" for want of a better word.  Preferably the format of your images will be print, but we are equally happy for you email images through to us which we can then view on a screen.

So, what are we looking for and looking at?  As a very loose guide and in no particular order, the composition and general aesthetics of the image.  What emotion, if any, is evoked. Is it original ("Is anything?" I hear you yawn)? Then, the technical side.  How was it lit?  How might it have been lit? What could have been done differently.  What is the interaction like between the subject and the photographer?  And then all these elements put together, does the image work or not?

Please let me know if you want to submit some images. It's fine if you just want to come along for the "entertainment,"  but we need images for the event to work, so c'mon, get involved and don't be shy.

We're quite excited by this social. I really hope it is a success and something we can keep up. So please let me know if you want to participate and if you will be bringing in prints or submitting electronic images.  If you are doing the latter I would ideally like to receive them before the end of next weekend so that I can get them onto my laptop and into lightroom.  This will just save time on the night.

Any questions? Please email me on jonathandawes@gmail.com

"The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue."   Dorothy Parker.

Advanced Photographers

Last month Simon organised our biggest ever meet in the bowels of Waterloo Station. We rented a huge space for the day from the station manager and filled it with 30 photographers, 15 models and a handful of makeup artists.

Will Cheung from Advanced Photographer Magazine came along for the day to shoot with us and see what the group was all about and he has written a piece on the group. The magazine hits the news-stands today so go and get your copy.

Thanks to everyone who made it such a great day.

Our First Blog

The London Strobist Meetup Group now have their own blog. We have been based on flickr for quite some time now but we felt it would be nice to set up a blog so that we can keep a few static pages of useful information around and write up some of our meets as well in a more structured way.

So watch this space.. we will be expanding it very soon