Next Meeting 20.01.2016 English-Speaking

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Since 1994
Next Meeting 20.01.2016
English-Speaking Photography Club of Brussels
Next newsletter submission deadline 30.01.2016
Newsletter no 225, January 2016
Best overall Dreams Challenge, by Endre Sebok
Send us your photos for the next newsletter. News, articles and creative writing also very welcome.
Photos should be between 1 Mb and 2 Mb filesize in jpeg format. Send to [email protected]. Filenames
should identify you and distinguish the image. For example: FredSmith01_flowers.jpg or FredSmith02_Venice.jpg
[email protected]
www.viewfinders.be
Bank account: 310-1244075-39
We look forward to seeing you all, old and new, at the Swedish Church and Cultural Centre
35 avenue des Gaulois, 1040 Brussels, tel. 02.387.25.19, next to the Merode metro station (metro lines 1& 5, tram 81 & 83, buses 22, 27, 61, 80)
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Happy New Year to all Viewfinders members!
Photo by: Robert Paridaens
about assembling a panel to submit to the RPS. More
details see Richard Sylvester
[email protected]—note registration deadline is 22 January.
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you…
Review of December meeting
Photo by: David van den Bunder
For our last club meeting of 2015 we were again welcomed in the Swedish Church which was nicely decorated for the Christmas period or "Juletid", and treated to
a tasty cup of mulled wine. Club President Alun Foster
kicked off the meeting as usual with some announcements. Of specific interest was the news that our successful "Love Story" exhibition held last year at the Halles St Gery will get a follow up at the Gasthuisberg in
Leuven during spring this year. There will even be
enough space to hang additional prints, giving other
Viewfinders members a chance to show their
work! More practical details will be provided once the
planning has been fixed.
After giving feedback on each image, Raluca awarded the prizes to her top picks. Endre Sebok
won both Best Overall image (minimalistic scene of a
floating pontoon) and Best Projected image (a collection
of figurines and masks with quite a dark undertone).
The prize for Best Print went to Jorge Hortua for a colorful and quite eclectic abstract image. And finally, as is
often the case, the audience had its own preference
and awarded the People's choice to Sebastian Boatca
for his dark and ominous image of a rickety walk bridge.
Honourable mentions were also received by Christine
Jonckheere,
Ana
Agundez,
Stephen
Johns and Robert
Taylor.
A date to remember for those who have registered, is
the next RPS Benelux Distinctions advisory day to be
held on February 13th at the Cercle des Voyageurs. A
great opportunity to get some constructive feedback on Our congratulations
to the winners, and a
your images, especially if you are thinking
big thank you to all
members who submitted images for this
challenge. And last
but not least we
would of course also
like to thank Raluca
for her expert advice
and feedback!
Honourable Mention
Alun Foster, Raluca Caragea and Endre Sebok
Photo by: Anna Agundez
Versatile year – tribute to Georges GRARD
We then continued with our main activity for the evening: the first challenge of the season with "Dreams" as
the theme. Our judge was Raluca Caragea. Unfortunately, our second invited judge, Bart Ramakers, had to cancel. A total of 28 images were submitted (21 digital and
7 prints). Following the break Raluca took the stage to
give her views on the images. With a topic like
"Dreams" we of course try to encourage lots of different
interpretations of the theme, which was certainly the
case! There was a whole variety of subjects and moods,
ranging from colourful and tranquil to very dark and
sometimes quite nightmarish!
Sizing up your photography kit bag, Romania and Japan
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January preview and Photobook Workshop
Preview of January meeting
Richard
Report on Viewfinders Photobook workshop
Photobooks are an increasingly popular way to present
your work. On that basis, Viewfinders organized a workshop for members on 28th November .We were fortunate to have two excellent and complementary tutors
in Trevor Waldron and Gina Van Hoof and a small
Then, as our main speaker for the evening, we have the
enough group that everyone was able to benefit from
pleasure of welcoming the newest member of our club,
their expertise.
Sebastian Boatca. Sebastian moved to Brussels at the
In the course of the day, we were introduced to the diversity of work that can be described by the term
“photobook”. There are certainly many more possibilities than those provided by the websites that enable
you to publish your own work, though these are increasingly good. Other options include scrapbooks and
“accordions” and in addition to photos, other materials
and text may be added depending on what you want to
achieve. As both tutors emphasized, ask yourself “what
am I trying to say”, and keep asking. This can be something very ambitious or something as simple as a day-by
Dreams Challenge: People’s choice
-day record of a holiday. Whatever it is, it should dictate
end of September and instantly made an impact on our the rest of your choices.
club by winning the People’s Choice Award at our December Challenge on Dreams, and making some contributions to our Newsletter. Sebastian will talk to us
about his interests and life as a photographer, the gear
in his bag, and will be presenting photos from his travels, including his native homeland of Romania, and from
a visit to one of his favourite countries, Japan. He has a
blog dedicated to Japan culture and his personal experiences there at:
Photo by: Alun Foster
Photo by: Sebastian Boatca
After the opening announcements, Alun Foster will present a TTT (ten-minute technical tip) on the mysteries of
resizing digital images. This knowledge comes in handy
when submitting images, whether for Viewfinder exhibitions, challenges, the banner on the Viewfinder’s website, or more generally when uploading images to the
internet.
see you at the meeting.
sebastianboatca.wordpress.com
You can also learn more about Sebastian and his photography by visiting his other websites at:
www.sebastianboatca.com
and
www.500px.com/
sebastianboatca
We will be looking forward to his talk and we hope to
Photobook workshop
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Photobook and exhibitions
Report on Viewfinders Photobook workshop (contd)
Exhibitions
The afternoon session was spent working with prints
that members had brought with them to see how these
could be turned into a coherent project. This involved
taking the overall theme, making a selection and then
looking at how pictures worked together on the page.
Almost invariably, it involved discarding that special
photo, which however good, just didn’t fit the theme. It
proved to be a much more effective way of working
than trying to make the same choices on a computer
screen.
Young Gallery, Avenue Louise 75B (Behind Steingenberger Wiltcher Hotel)
Vanessa von Zitzewitz at Young Gallery, Brussels: ongoing until 13th February.
http://www.younggalleryphoto.com/exhibitions.html
I think we departed inspired, informed, and looking forward to sharing the eventual photobooks. Many thanks
to Gina and Trevor for their leadership of the workshop.
Brendan Barnes
Photobook follow-up
For all of you who attended the workshop (and also for
those of you who didn’t attend), are you planning on
making a photobook in the near future? Or have you
Contretype,
already made a photobook that you are really proud of?
4 A Cité Fontainas 1060 Saint-Gilles-Bruxelles
Would you like to go one step further and enter your
photobook in a photobook exhibition? Would you like IMPRESSIONS JAPONAISES: 150 years of bilateral Belgothe opportunity to have it reviewed by world class pho- Japanese relations
tobook selectors and promoted on an international
platform? If so, then you may be interested in sub- 27/1/16 to 27/3/16
mitting a photobook for the photobook exhibition that In 2016, Belgium celebrates the 150th anniversary of
is being organized by The Royal Photographic Society
the establishment of diplomatic relations with Japan. It
(RPS). Details can be found at:
is in this framework, with the support of WallonieBruxelles International, that Contretype curated an exhttp://www.rps.org/Exhibitions%20and%
hibition of photos by seven Belgian and Japanese pho20Competitions/Competitions/Photobook
tographic artists (Jean-Paul Brohez, Sélim Christiaens,
The exhibition is open to both RPS and non RPS mem- Bernd Kleinheisterkamp, Frédéric Materne, Michel Mazbers. The submission deadline is 31 July 2016 so you still zoni, Satoru Toma and Kumi Oguro) who all live Belhave some time to put your photobook together.
gium.
For more information on this on the RPS, speak to Rich- www.contretype.org
ard Sylvester.
Photo by: © Vanessa von Zitzewitz
Posted by Alun on Viewfinders Facebook page
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Exhibitions, Facebook, Club
Fondation A Stichting,
Avenue Van Volxem, 304, 1190 Brussels
Walker Evans ‘Anonymous’
For information on ’15 spaces for photography in Belgium’ check this website:
http://www.thewordmagazine.com/neighbourhoodlife/15-spaces-for-photography-in-belgium/
31 January to 4 April 2016
www.fondationastichting.be
Photo by: © Walker Evans
If you are on Facebook, connect to the Viewfinders
Group! Its an informal group for sharing news on
events, ‘for sale’ items, interesting websites and news
stories, or just to share some of your recent photos.
Club Equipment
Viewfinders has the following equipment available to
members for monthly loans:
Canon 300D camera
Canon negative scanner
HP flatbed scanner
ColorMunki screen and printer colour calibrator.
Requests for the loans should be made to the Club President in advance of the meetings when they were to be
collected and they should be returned at the following
meeting.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) remains one of the most important
and influential photographers in the history of the medium.
His career spanned the emergence of the modern mass media in the 1920s to the full acceptance of photography as an
art form in the 1960s and 70s. Many of Evans’s individual
images have become landmarks in both the history of photography and the social history of that era. Over nearly four
decades Evans used pages of popular magazines to produce a
resistant counter-commentary on American society and its
values. Where the mass media enjoyed celebrity culture, Evans photographed anonymous citizens. 'Walker Evans, Anonymous' presents original magazine pages alongside vintage
prints and related material, looking at Evans as a pioneer of
modern photography.
Extract from https://goo.gl/Tvbahm
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Calendar
20 January
Club Meeting
Sebastian Boatca
13 February
RPS Benelux
Distinctions Advisory Day at Le Cercle des Voyageurs
17 February
Club meeting
Assignment: Motion in Photography (1 min photo-film)
16 March
Club Meeting
Janet Haines
For more information about these events, please see the website www.viewfinders.be
Viewfinders committee 2015-2016
Alun Foster
President
0496 572 402
[email protected]
David Van den Bunder
Vice President
02 269 67 22
[email protected]
Jörg Tagger
Programme Coordinator
0486 590 010
[email protected]
Ana Agundez Garcia
Treasurer
0486 378 975
[email protected]
Richard Sylvester
Secretary
02 346 4916
[email protected]
Caroline Hendry
Membership Coordinator
0494 089 098
[email protected]
David Van den Bunder
Website Coordinator
02 269 67 22
[email protected]
Peter Easton
Newsletter Editor
0476 661 727
[email protected]
Kevin Scarlett/ Rick Barfoot
Newsletter Production
0486 298 630
[email protected]
Robert Paridaens
Associate Committee Member
0475 203 524
[email protected]
Rick Barfoot
Associate Committee Member
0497 137 546
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.viewfinders.be
Bank account: 310-1244075-39
Any items from members for publication are welcome. Images are particularly welcome, please send them in as separate attachments (not embedded in emails or documents), in
JPEG format, with no less than 1400 px on the long side, and minimal compression. Please be aware that, in accordance with the layout, some cropping may occur. Please send
submissions to the newsletter to: [email protected]
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Members’ Pictures of the Month
Digital only
Members’ Pictures of the Month
Do you want to see your images in print? Then feel free to send them in to [email protected]. Images
should be of a size suitable for publication, usually anything over 1Mb is fine, anything smaller than this just won’t
print well so please don’t send them in.
Turn of the year – A tribute to Georges GRARD - Robert Paridaens
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Members’ Pictures of the Month
Digital only
Keebab shop, Jerusalem - Martin Szekeresh
Fruit merchants, Jerusalem - Martin Szekeresh
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Members’ Pictures of the Month
Digital only
Americana in Tel Aviv—Martin Szekeresh
Coimbra, Portugal—Martin Szekresh
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Members’ Pictures of the Month
Digital only
Cycling the long road, Botswana—Peter Easton
Edible Mapone worms
(caterpillars), Botswana
- Peter Easton
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Members’ Pictures of the Month
Digital only
Afternoon rainstorm, Joburg—Peter Easton
Historic bar, Joburg - Peter Easton
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Members’ Pictures of the Month
Digital only
Dreams honourable mention—Robert Taylor
Dreams honourable mention—Stephen Johns