Photographic Guild of Nova Scotia

This year is the Eagle Watch Weekend in Sheffield Mills, Kings Co. and they are celebrating their 20th year. We are meeting at 8:15 am Exit 4, Hwy. 101 at the car pool area, Ellershouse and departing at 8:30 am for Sheffield Mills, for those that do not know the way. Otherwise members should proceed to Middle Dyke Rd. in Sheffield Mills, where the poultry farmers will lay out dead chicks for the feeding frenzy that occurs sometime after that.

Directions: Take Exit 12 at Kentville or Exit 11 at Greenwich and follow the blue eagle signs to Sheffield Mills.

Kindly download the Guild Field Trip Waiver (see Quick Links)  and have it filled out and turned in.

The Community Hall will have Pancake & Sausage Breakfast
Child $4.00, Adult $7.00
Musical entertainment provided.
Community Hall, 98 Black Hole Road, Sheffield Mills.
8:00am – 2:00pm

Don’t forget to tour the upstairs where we have lots of Eagle memorabilia for sale. Some which include beautiful hand painted Eagle neck laces, T-shirts stamped with the beautiful array of Eagles including 20th anniversary patch, beautifully framed 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 Eagle photos, Eagle bookmarks, and fridge magnets, Eagle books, key chains, also a room set aside to watch Eagle movies in comfort.

Also upstairs at the hall we have an annual display and sale of Eagle photos, Paintings, Sculptures, etc. taken from various artists from surrounding areas which are also for sale. For a one dollar entry taken at the door you will receive a ballot to enter for a $100.00 door prize, also one of the artists could win $100.00 for the People’s choice award.

“Life is Good”

John Webb

The Photographic Guild of Nova Scotia is pleased to host a special presentation by Scott Linstead on Saturday, January 28, 2012.

A full-time wildlife photographer who specializes camera trap and high-speed photography, Scott Linstead has published articles in Natural History Magazine and has a column on bird photography techniques in Outdoor Photography Canada. His unique skill set applies both in the field and to captive situations. Scott has yet to encounter a natural behavior that couldn’t be captured on camera, from extremely high-speed insect action to elusive subject set-ups.

In this unique presentation, Scott will discuss his philosophy on creating wildlife imagery. Although Scott straddles both the traditional and high-tech camps in his photographic endeavours, the technical, biological and ethical subtleties of high speed and camera trap photography will be examined in particular. Get a peek behind the curtain at the massive technical undertakings of his most published images and hear a firsthand account on the realities of publishing natural history photography for a living.

As a secondary topic, Scott will discuss his latest endeavour: aerial photography from radio controlled helicopters.

Join us in Theatre A of the Burke Education Building (corner of Inglis and Robie Street) of Saint Mary’s University at 7:30 pm, Saturday, January 28, 2012. Tickets are $20 at the door and there will be great door prizes from our sponsors: Atlantic Photo Supply, Black’s, Carsand-Mosher and Henry’s.

Winter Solstice Sunrise at Horseshoe Island Park, Halifax – 22nd December, 2011.

The sunrise is at 7:48 am – we will meet at the park at 6:30 am on Thursday to capture the vibrant colours (hopefully) just before the sun rises above the horizon. We will start seeing the colours probably at around 6:50-7:00 am, but the traffic might be a little heavy at that time of the day.

We can expect a relatively mild morning with above freezing temperature. There is a 40% chance for precipitation with mostly overcast. If the sky opens up before or around sunrise, this might result some spectacular colours. As Saturday’s forecast looks better (scattered clouds, no rain/snow, -5 Celsius), we will have a repeat trip scheduled for Saturday. You can double dip and come to both of the sunrises – and if you do, please bring signed waivers for both mornings).

I went out a few years ago to the spot. It was -20 at that time, but some great images came out of the camera that day. Here are a couple of images from that shoot. The sea-fog was rolling in, resulting some magical backdrop:

What you need:
- Your camera – an SLR or DSLR with one or more lenses or an advanced Point & Shoot camera.
- A spare battery, fully charged of course.
- Sufficient memory card or film.
- Just in case: protection against rain or snow – e.g. a rainsleeve.
- A tripod – this is important, please do not leave it at home.
- A flashlight – since we start when it’s quite dark, the flashlight helps seeing the controls of your camera.
- Your creative self – dressed up warmly, it will be cold out there!

If you have time, we can go to a Tim’s after shooting to warm up with a hot coffee. If some of you are not in a hurry to go to work, we can take off to shoot some other locations after the sunrise.

As on the macro field trip, I ask all of you who will join us to post a couple of images to our PGNS Flickr Group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/pgns/

Please bring a signed waiver with you! If you do not have a waiver yet, here is the link to download and print it:

http://www.photoguild.ns.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/pgns-field-trip-waiver.pdf

Hope to see you there!

Happy shooting,
Laszlo

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Nov. 20th, Sunday is a very special evening for those that still shoot slides and/or have slides that they would like to have projected and judged.
Kindly submit up to 7 slides,Titles have to be entered on the Guild web site by Friday at midnight and bring them in. Yes, you have to come in or drop them off to a member for submission.

No film recorder or digital images accepted.
Pictorial, Nature, Creative, Portrait, Photo Travel, P/J, and Humour A total of 7 slides.

Mini Seminar 4: Waterfalls of Nova Scotia Barry Burgess, Barry has photographed more than 50 waterfalls in NS Slide show presented using a medium format slide projector.
Mini Seminar 5: Purely for Enjoyment Yau-Sun Tong.

Sunday November 20^th
10:00am to 4:00pm
Cost $15 to cover materials.

Limited to 10 people. People who bought ColorMunkis get first preference.

Location: Peter Steeper’s Studio

This is a hands on workshop where you will learn how the use Guild’s X-rite Eye-One Photo Pro and the ColorMunki. I’ll also have an X-rite Eye-One IO, Eye-One Display II and viewing booth to use.

You will learn:

1. How to calibrate your camera using the ColorChecker Passport and use the profiles in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.
2. How to profile your monitor.
3. How to create custom paper profiles for your inkjet printer.
4. How to setup softproofing in Photoshop and get accurate prints.

Our goal for the day is to start with a still life scene and accurately reproduce it on your monitor and prints.

We will profile any device you bring with you and create profiles for any paper. I’ll send you the test patterns to print before the workshop.

Learn more about colour management for photographers at xritephoto.com.
Hosted by Peter Steeper.

Saturday October 29th. It is our night photography experiment.

We plan to meet at the Public Gardens Main Entrance across from The Lord Nelson.
Time: 6:00 PM

What to bring:  Tripod, Medium Zoom or Wide Angle or 40 to 100 mm lens and the camera body!
Find out how to set the self timer on your camera so it will fire the shutter for you
We will shoot various shots along Spring Garden Road while checking to see what results we get with various settings.

Bring proper clothing in case it gets cold!

Download the field trip waiver off the website.  Turn in the signed sheet when we meet.

Regards,

Merv KM  456-1449

Saturday October 22nd, 2011.
Clam Harbour Beach Provincial Park

Meeting Place: Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. at
Tim Horton’s parking lot. 84 Main St. Dartmouth, N.S.

Field Trip waiver to be signed there and map to area will be handed out.

We shall leave from Tim Horton’s at 8:30 a.m. sharp, and go directly to Clam Harbour Provincial Park as low tide is at 9:51 a.m.

Road to take is Highway 7 to Webbers/Esso Station turn off to Clam Harbour Beach. {see map} this is about a 45 minute drive.
Plan is to arrive at the Clam Harbour Provincial Park by 9:30 a.m. There is plenty of parking on the road before the gate.
There are picnic tables in the park so plan to bring a light lunch if you so wish.

High tide is at 4:05 p.m. and we may all wish to leave earlier and photograph other sites of interest along the route back.
For those wishing to have supper on the way back we shall stop at Marcus and Willy’s Pub and Sports Bar at the Forest Hills Shopping Center on Highway 7.
{This is about 16 km. from Webber’s turn off on the return to Darmouth.}

Hope to see a few of you as this promises to be a fun day!

Ciao,
Eugene

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Changes to Meeting Place and Time

The following are “NEW instructions” for members who wish to join Clarence on the Blueberry Field Trip to Parrsboro on Sunday Oct 16th.

Time: 8:45 am

Place: Hwy 2 and West Brook Road

Drive to Parrsboro at Tim Hortons make a right turn on Highway no 2. Follow this road until you come to the W. Brook Road (there is a road sign and a Shaw Aggregate sign). He will meet you there. at 8:45am. You have gone too far if you see the West Brook Market (a vacant building with 5 white doors). Note the name West Brook on Highway 2. The road can be seen leading to New Canaan.

Everyone will follow Clarence leaving this location to the Blueberry fields at 9:00 sharp. Lave home a little early so you do not miss him.

Clarences will be driving a dark green Dark Green RAV-4, his cel # is 1-506-874-6779

Clarence says that the fields should be prime and the weather forecast is good.

View Blueberry Field Trip in a larger map

We will all meet at the Mi’kmawey Debert Interpretive Trail on Saturday 8th October at 10:00 a.m. The rain date is the following day (Sunday, October 9th) with all essential details being the same as for Saturday.
Where: The Mi’kmawey Debert Interpretive Trail.
When: On Saturday 8th October at 10:00 a.m.
Cost: No charge to Guild members.

How to get there;
From Halifax, point your vehicle towards Truro. Where the 102 intersects with highway 104 take the left to Amherst and New Brunswick. At exit 13 take the off ramp and at the stop sign take a right on to McElmon Road then veer left on to Plains Rd, the distance from the stop sign to the trail is approximately 2km. Signs for the Mi’kmawey Interpretive Trail will be on your left. There is a small parking lot there. If you have a GPS the co-ordinates for the location are as follows,
45 24.792N, 63 25.613W
The trail is of a moderate nature with most of the terrain being relatively flat. We will be venturing into three different habitats that with luck should afford us a good variety of mushrooms.

The info in the “Field Trip for Beginners” is of a general nature and all the points made in the document may not necessarily apply to your particular group (principally photographers). The other PDF is “Mushroom Fruiting Body“.
Any questions or concerns you may contact me at this email address or by telephone at 396-5465.

As Rob and Melissa mentioned it at the Joggins Fossil Centre, we’ll have a competition for the “Best of the Field Trip” image and JFC will provide a $30 gift certificate for the chosen image.

Here is what you need to do to include your best images:
- Once you processed your images taken on 24th September on our field trip to Joggins, upload them to your flickr account. If you do not yet have a flickr account, you can open it free, just go to www.flickr.com for creating your account.
- Suggested image size is 1024×768 – please use sRGB colour space.
- If you are not yet a member of the PGNS flickr group, please join our group. Here is the link: http://www.flickr.com/groups/pgns/
- Add your photo to our PGNS group and tag your image with “PGNS Field Trip Joggins”
- There is no limit to the number of images – you can submit as many as you want

Melissa and her team will review the images on or after October 17th, 2011 – so please submit your images before October 17th.

Good luck to all of you!