Thursday 6th July - Campbell Park & Willen Lake

This coming Thursday, we'll be meeting up at Campbell Park (click here for directions to the carpark) at 7pm.

We'll explore a little around Campbell Park, the Grand Union Canal, then onto Willen Lake, finally looping back round to Campbell park via a short walk along the Grand Union Canal again. The total walk is approx 2.4 miles.

ALL are welcome, members and non-members alike. Bring a friend and come along and meet us :)

Below is an itemised map of interesting locations on the walk

  • 1 - Park here
  • 2 - Nice views across the pond with reeds in foreground and trees in background
  • 3 - Sculpture, "Head' by Alan Jones - Can you capture the sun in its eyes? 
  • 4 - Bridge over the canal - nice views of barges from a higher angle
  • 5 - Wakeboarding. If it's not going on, it's worth a return visit to this spot to capture some action!
  • 6 - A great spot to stop and feed the ducks
  • 7 - Birdhide. If you're so inclined, it's worth a visit
  • 8 - Medicine Wheel - A small standing stones arrangement
  • 9 - Posts in the water that often attract birds who need a perch. Can make an interesting shot.
  • 10 - The Peace Pagoda. Can be a wonderful location at sunset
  • 11 - The Prayer Tree - Lots of prayers tied to the tree can make for interesting detail shots.
  • 12 - Nipponzan Myohoji - The home of the monks. An oriental style building. Please respect their privacy though, telephoto shots only
  • 13 - Rejoin the Grand Union canal. Should be some nice images and light by this time
  • 14 - Some lovely trees on the side of the canal. They make a nice repeating pattern

From here, it's just a short walk back over the bridge and back to the cars.

Summer picnic and awards evening

Thursday 29th June 

This week's club meet is the annual awards evening. This year we thought we would have a picnic! The event will take place from 7:30pm at our normal venue, Christ Church at Stantonbury campus.

We'll be awarding trophies to the winners of the NCPS internal league (and other competitions).

Everyone's welcome! Family, friends, neighbours, whoever. The more the merrier frankly

Bring some lovely food/drink for yourself, be it a Tesco sausage roll, or a haute cuisine dish of your own making! 
Note, like other events, this is not a "bring and share" event (too much wasted food!). However, feel free to do what you like in your own sub group/clique! 

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Summer Programme : Simpson Model Shoot 22/6/2017

This week, we'll be heading over to Simpson, Milton Keynes for a model shoot.
 
We will be meeting at The Plough pub at 7pm (postcode MK6 3AH, then it's just a short walk to the location, a storm drain/tunnel type thing which has lots of graffiti. There's also a large grassed area where you can shoot if you're not that keen on the grungy look. We've shot here before, with Darren S and with Em Theresa

PLEASE NOTE : THIS EVENT IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON MEMBERS WILL BE CHARGED £10 TO SHOOT, WHICH IS REFUNDABLE UPON JOINING THE CLUB WITHIN THREE MONTHS.


Suggested equipment
Lenses

  • Ideally, anything in the range 50mm to 200mm is ideal for portraiture
  • As fast as possible. f1.2 to f2.8 ideally. This will help in darker scenes, but will also provide a nice shallow depth of field for your portraits.

Lighting

  • Reflector - You can reflect some sunlight into the tunnel with one of these, providing some golden light on your subject. Fill in those shadows that judges hate so much :)
  • Speedlights, triggers and portable softboxes
  •   A well placed speedlight can really make your portraits pop
  •   If you have gels to colour your speedlite, great! There will be some gels on hand if you dont have any (Jamie's own) 
  •   There will be some triggers for Canon users (Jamie's own) should you wish to try them out

We hope to have two models available

Not interested in portraits and models? No problem! The location we've chosen is close to a picturesque section of the Grand Union Canal. You can find some lovely landscape images here, as well as the local avian and insect wildlife to photograph