Wratten Lecture - share your thoughts

[davidc]

First of all I wanted to say thanks to Bill for his organisation and choice of speaker, very good work and well done.

Thought it might be nice for club members to discuss what they liked (or disliked!) about the talk, collating it in one place and perhaps feeding back to Damien eventually?

Anyway, I'll kick off

I thought there were a number of interesting points, including the one Mike mentioned about drawing a circle a mile around your house and focusing efforts within. I also really like the three square crop shots that formed a nice triptych of the chap walking past the ascending steps and looking for an "image" that isn't just composed of a single frame. What surprised (and pleased) me most though was his emphasis on the emotional impact of an image and communicating something to the viewer - no comments about highlights at the edge of the frame, or composition (bar one or two remarks), it was all about seeing a scene and taking the time to render it in such a way that you communicated your vision. THAT I really liked and it was refreshing to hear! I was also pleased there was very little "gear talk" too and although he stopped short of echoing Chase Jarvis' "the best camera is the one you carry with you" quote, he certainly seemed to have the spirit of that quote!

It also tickled me to hear the faint intake of breath when he showed the palm tree shots with the extraneous branches cloned out... I wondered if he'd mortally offended some of the crowd then but I think his comment that photography isn't about creating a perfect series of record shots was 100% valid and one I share, and it seemed like he won people over.

I must confess I'm not a fan of Amateur Photographer magazine and had a little trepidation when hearing it was him speaking - the mag discussion sections seem to be people focusing on "film v digital" arguments, bickering over the use of photoshop and lots of people simply arguing back and forth (read the freebie magazine, only one letter is NOT a complaint of some description!). Therefore to hear him just talk about photography and simplicity was VERY nice indeed.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised and come home with a number of ideas and thoughts swimming around in my head. Job well done to Damien and Bill!

[Rose]

Well said David - I thoroughly enjoyed last night. Damien was witty and entertaining, insightful and inspirational. I have come away wanting to experiment more with exposure compensation. I always pick the point I want to expose for and then use exposure lock rather then EV compensation and it'll be interesting to see if I get different results.

[Mike Farley]

I am currently putting my own thoughts together about last night's talk, but in the meantime here is one of my photos showing DD talking to someone from the audience.

[davidc]

Can you clone out the distracting white background?

[Paul Heester]

A few weeks back I googled him and visited his site http://www.damiendemolder.com/ and wasnt impressed for some reason. However, after last nights talk I was pleasantly surprised. He had some good ideas. I like the idea of limiting yourself with the 1 mile radius. Ive done similar before in taking only 1 lens out with me or only shooting through shop windows. His other idea of sticking White Balance to Daylight appeals to me. He is correct that in the film days we didnt have a choice and I dont remember it being a limiting factor back then.

Ive also noticed that his example pictures are all recently posted on his flickr feed and not years old so he still appears to find time to be an amateur - http://www.flickr.com/people/damiend/

I think he got the mood of the talk just right with the second half being more light-hearted but still instructive.

[Peter Boughton]

Heh, that's a rather 90s style website.

I agree with much of what's been said already, I found it an interesting and inspiring talk.

One thing that was a distraction to me was the bright white slide backgrounds, particularly when they followed a darker slide. Either more consistent backgrounds, or half-second transitions would probably be a good idea.

[Mike Farley]

This the website to which DD referred last night. It includes commentaries on several of the images which he showed us, but could do with a bit of a tidy up as the events information is out of date.

http://www.wordsonpictures.com/words/

[Mike Farley]

I fully concur with Dave's thoughts about Bill Yate's vision in securing Damien Demolder as a speaker and making all the arrangements for last night's lecture. He has also been heavily involved in the exhibition, so this has definitely been a busy time for him. We should all be grateful to Bill for his efforts on our behalf.

Knowing that I had to give the vote of thanks at the end, I was making notes in preparation and I see that I wrote down two words more than once - "think" and "different". Throughout the presentation, that's what came across - think about what you are doing to create something which is different.

There were all sorts of tips and I doubt if anyone went away without having learnt something. One of those there was due to be photographing at the enthronement of Justin Welby earlier today. He had been planning to leave at the interval to travel to Canterbury, but stayed on until the end because of what he was getting out of it.

I did think that the presentation could have been a bit more balanced with the topics in first part covered more succintly. When Damien started to motor during the second half, it became really exhilarating. Throw in the humour and it was an excellent talk.

[Mike Farley]

One thing that was a distraction to me was the bright white slide backgrounds, particularly when they followed a darker slide. Either more consistent backgrounds, or half-second transitions would probably be a good idea.

Yes, that was a bit of a shock, especially the first time it happened. With my own presentations, I have found that black type on a white background and images filling most of the screen against a grey background works well.