Oct 09

Macclesfield win the Robertshaw Trophy

By Conor Awards, Competitions, Members Successes, News No Comments

An excellent night in Holmes Chapel saw our Camera Club lift the Robertshaw trophy for the first time in 15 years. Five clubs complete for this trophy and the overall scores on the night were : Macclesfield 180 points, Crewe 172, Leek 171, Blythe Bridge 159 and Holmes Chapel 159. The event was well attended by all clubs with Macc being represented by Paul Scott, Anthony Gosling, Keith Parker, Kevin Blake, Peter Thomasson and Conor Molloy. Thank you to our new External Competition secretary Chris Aggersbury for co-ordinating the submission and selection of our 10 images. Our individual image scores were :

Kissing Beeeaters by Conor Molloy (19 points) , Focus by Steve Gresty (18 points) , Quarter inch Jack by Antony Gosling (19 points), Mia by Paul Scott (20 points)

Battle of the Hurdles by Alison Lomax (16 points), Nature Red in Tooth and claw by Leonie Sellars (16 points), Polo player by David Tolliday (18 points), One Angel Square, Manchester by Anthony Gosling (16 points)

Arctic Tern Feeding Time by David Tolliday (18 points), Hunting Great Grey Owl by Conor Molloy (20 points).

All of the images can be viewed under the Competitions tab on the website. The judge was Robert Millin from Stockport. Well done to everyone.

Mia by Paul Scott

Aug 24

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Val & Mark awarded exhibition grant for Barnaby next June

By Conor News

More good news for Camera Club members Val Lear and Mark Helliwell who have been awarded an exhibition grant for next years Barnaby festival for their work with a local lady, Rachael.

Rachael is a hoarder who was first diagnosed with OCD some 35 years ago. She recently made contact with Val and Mark through the Camera Club, seeking help from willing photographers to help her construct a record of the process of decluttering the many living spaces in her home. She feels this is vital to her recovery, and hopes that it will lead to her home becoming once again a liveable/navigable space so that some degree of order and contentment will return to her life.

To address the above Val and Mark are designing an exhibition with the aim of :

providing a more informative insight into the thoughts and feelings of a hoarder
using multi-media to convey the clutter and cumulative claustrophobia of the living space
showing how the space changes as the hoarder sorts and clears.

The photos below shows Rachael watching tennis in her armchair , one of the few spaces available to her. Also, a pile of paper that has been used by Rachael to collect and sort her hair.

Well done Val and Mark a terrific accomplishment , I am sure all the club members will come and support you at the exhibition next June.

Aug 12

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Brian gets commendation in flower show competition

By Conor Botany, Competitions, Members Successes, News

Stefan Buczacki Photography Competition

You have to be in it to win it, as the saying goes: although he didn’t win, Brian Law did get a commended in this year’s Stefan Buczacki Photography Competition and two complementary tickets to the Southport Show. This flower photography competition is a regular part of the annual Southport Flower Show. The competition had 4 sections: British Plant Portraits, British Garden Views, British Natural History and Wildlife, all of which were print classes, and a digital class, British Garden/Plant related. Brian said he took the easy option and entered the two permitted images into the digital class the poppy bud image, below, got the commended award.
The subject matter for this image came from his garden and was the result of an accident when he knocked the unopened bud off the plant with a lawn mower when cutting the grass. Brian took this unopened bud into the house left it on the sideboard for a couple of days and took a few shots of it as it gradually unfurled. He used a sheet of white mount board as the background and available light from the window with the camera tripod mounted. The image was processed with Nik Color Effex Pro.

Brian

Jul 31

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Camera club member shortlisted for major award

By Conor Astro photography, Awards, News

The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer

A photograph of the Orion Nebula and the neighbouring Running Man Nebula taken by longstanding Macclesfield Camera Club member David Tolliday has been shortlisted for The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015 competition organised by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. The results will be announced at an awards ceremony on 17 September 2015 and the image will be included in a book of award winning and shortlisted images. The image was taken during David’s first serious attempt at astrophotography from a dark sky site in Mid Wales in November 2014 using a Canon 5D MkIII camera and 500mm lens set on an Astrotrac borrowed from fellow Camera Club member Kevin Blake (Thank you Kevin). The time was well after midnight, the temperature was below freezing and there was ice on the tripod and frost covered the camera bag.

The image is a stack of five separate exposures taken at different settings ranging from 5 to 180 seconds at f4 to record detail the different parts of the nebula which have very different brightness levels. The images were edited and combined in Photoshop.

David Tolliday’s Orion Nebula and the neighbouring Running Man Nebula

Jul 19

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Photography day with the Vintage Racing Cars

By Conor motor sport, News

A small group of Camera Club car enthusiasts headed out to the Vintage Car Racing at the Oulton Park circuit yesterday. Lucky again with the weather and light, giving almost perfect photography conditions, helped by the fact that these cars are good pace slower than the modern F1 variety.

Oulton Park is a great circuit for photography, lots of different vantage points without having to shoot through wire fencing. We left Macc at 8.15am to drive the 30 miles or so to the circuit and arrived in time for the morning practice session, we also met up with Matt Eagles an ex-camera club member who now lives near to the circuit. We used this morning session to walk the circuit and see where the best points were to photograph the actual racing which started after lunch at 12.45pm. We were also able to walk the paddock and get close up photos of the cars , their engines being work on and chat to the owners, all very friendly stuff. There were 10 races which gave ample opportunity to get some shots and to practice with slower shutter speeds, panning and varying angles. It needed around 125th second to get good panning shots whilst handholding lenses up to 400mm. We got plenty of single car shots but the best are the actual racing shots with four or five cars battling it out for position.

Steve Gresty, David Tolliday, Conor Molloy and Matt Eagles.