Group Leader: Peter Kingsbury

Venue: Verwood Hub. Fortnightly.

Day/Time: Tuesday 10.30 am – 12.00 noon

Contact: To email Peter Click Here

The Group

Further details http://www.camera.verwood.info

My objective is to help the Group get more out of their photography by understanding how to control the situation and get the effect they want, not just a snap or record.  My style would be as a knowledgeable facilitator working with and involving the group as much as possible. I like a club atmosphere, with themed workshops rather than a lecture style. Too much theory is not everyone’s cup of tea and my style is to pose a question and explore it, as there are few absolute right answers in photography. For example what combination of shutter speed / aperture should I use? Now this could be a boring lecture on the science or it could be a debate on how to use various combinations to achieve the effect you want. My style would be the latter. I’m comfortable with the science if I need it.

The only requirement for people to actively participate would be a digital camera. We will work on different themes each meeting starting with fairly basic things such as understanding the functionality of their cameras (most have the same sort of functionality just different buttons to do it). Then moving through things like: playing with light, using portable flash, which lens shall I use, basic composition, photographing people, (formally, informally, indoors and outdoors), getting movement into a photograph, from snapshot to a work of art, studio flash portraiture, macro photography, sport photography, combating camera shake, post production work on the computer, enhancing a picture using software, understanding picture digital formats and when to use which ones. The list of what we could do is really endless and I will be happy to discuss this with the Group.
We also run occasional studio sessions where we set up a mobile studio and hire a model, there will be a charge for this activity

I will also be using Affinity Photo as a demo tool so we can look at enhancing a picture using computer software allowing folks to use their own software at home to emulate what we do and discuss in the meeting, so that people with different software can explore its functionality. Summer is a valuable time for photography and I would happily carry on after the “official” term ends in June. As time goes on we could introduce informal competitions and invite guest speakers from time to time if appropriate.

The Leader

My academic background started with teaching applied business studies majoring in psychology. As time went on I moved into IT in business specialising in applied database technology and web based business applications.

My degree and post-graduate qualifications are in teaching, psychology and economics, HR and software engineering management. I became involved in Verwood U3A after my wife joined the Art Group. Because we holiday regularly in Spain I wanted to improve my language skills so I joined the French Conversation and Spanish Groups.

I’m excited to be offering Digital Photography having been involved with photography as a passionate hobby since I was ten. I had my own wet darkroom and worked with every darkroom colour process that came in during those years until 2003 when I switched to digital.