You may recall that Robert presented his talk "Wildlife for All Seasons" at one of our earliest Zoom meetings. Now he's back with his talk "Small is Beautiful".

Macro photography opens up a fascinating world of wildlife, including many subjects close to home. This talk demonstrates techniques for making striking images of butterflies, dragonflies and other insects, orchids and fungi including composition, depth of field and controlling light, as well as how to find and identify the subject.

Here's a link to Robert's website: Natural World Photography: Welcome .

This is a reminder for the External Competitions Secretary

Alan is a wildlife photographer, writer and workshop leader based in Northumberland. He is a brand ambassador for FUJIFILM UK – an ‘Official FUJIFILM X Photographer’, and also for specialist camera filter manufacturer, Formatt-Hitech.

His appreciation and fascination of wildlife leads him to document and share the natural world we live in. From his favourite local patch, The Farne Islands, to the birds and mammals of the Masai Mara, he is always amazed by our wildlife.

He is a strong supporter of wildlife and conservation, internationally and throughout the United Kingdom. He is a member and supporter of several conservation organisations who also benefit from his print sales, photography workshops and writing.

Here’s a link to Alan’s website: http://alanhewittphotography.co.uk/.

This replaces our planned Studio Night which obviously can no longer happen! We are going for a Portfolio evening instead where members will share a portfolio/panel of three images via Zoom. The aim of this is to try and present images in a slightly different format. The process of producing a portfolio is very straightforward; the hardest thing is identifying images that work well together. Sandra has produced a set of instructions for doing a portfolio in both Lightroom and Photoshop, these include screenshots to help but you may have to magnify the document to see everything on the screenshot. Like everything in photography the ways she has shown are not the only ways to do this and there may well be better ways available on the internet.

Each of us can prepare a maximum of two portfolios and we will show them in two rounds. If you wish you can explain why you think the images go together and how you found the process of producing the final set.

The instructions for creating a portfolio are available for viewing or downloading on the Documents page of the Members' Information section of the website.

This is the first competition of the season comprising only digital images. The results from his competition count towards the Annual League Table.The RULES for submitting entries for digital images are available on the Information page of the website. If you want to submit images to this competition go to the Members page of the website, login with your username and password and then select the My Images menu option.If you have previously submitted images onto the website, you can browse through them here and select up to a maximum of four for this competition. If you have yet to submit images to the website select the blue Add Image button and follow the instructions; then select up to a maximum of four for this competition.Digital images or prints submitted to a previous club competition MUST NOT be resubmitted for this competition.

Laurie is one of Scotland's leading natural history and landscape photographers, and his own picture library of over 120,000 images is the most extensive of its kind by any single photographer working in Scotland. He also contributes to three other libraries: NHPA, RSPB IMAGES and GETTY IMAGES. His award winning photographs regularly feature in magazines, books, exhibitions, displays and company reports, and are distributed in a wide range of products from calendars and postcards to mouse-mats and prints.

He regularly revisits the same areas in order to gain in-depth coverage of rare or elusive species such as the golden eagle, and spent over six years photographing these birds for the highly acclaimed book 'Golden Eagles'. However, Laurie does not neglect more commonplace subjects and works just as intensively to find creative and inventive ways of recording them. Most of his work is carried out in the field using 35mm equipment and natural lighting whenever possible. He is dedicated to photographing genuinely wild creatures in their natural habitats.

Laurie is the author of two books - 'The Wildlife Photographs of Laurie Campbell' and 'The RSPB Guide to Bird and Nature Photography', and he has illustrated several others including 'The Great Wood of Caledon', 'The Cairngorm Reindeer', 'Wild Scotland', 'Badgers' and 'Golden Eagles'. His most recent book 'Highlanders' features Scotland's ancient breed of long-haired cattle. Laurie writes regularly for 'Outdoor Photography' (UK) magazine and has appeared in the television programmes 'Wildshots', 'The Photoshow' and 'BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year'. To date he has won 23 awards (including 3 Category Winners) in the prestigious BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.

Here's a link to Laurie's website: https://www.lauriecampbell.com/ .