Dear Digital Photographers, Videographers and Graphics people:

At our November 20^th meeting of DIG we had 29 attendees and 13 presentations. There were 5 people who attended for the first time, bringing our current membership up to 62. You become a member by attending one or more meetings and membership is free. We received $22 in donations, which covers the monthly rental of our meeting space ($15) as well as some office supplies. Thank you very much for your contributions!

The purpose of sending you these DIG Minutes is to show you the work of others and to help motivate you to get out and create new digital content! Then bring it over for next month’s “show and tell” on January 15^th, 2009.

In attendance at the November 20^th meeting were:  Alan Cordrey, Bess Orenzow, Charlotte Sneyd, Dave Ehlert, Dennis Kasnicki, Diane Kasnicki, Diana Paradise, Diane Yancey, Don Grider, Doug Dannels, Frank Karycinski, Gene Spicer, Gina Sue Wilson, Jim Enterkin, Jim Gardner, Jim Sneyd, Joe Orenzow, Kaaren McNulty, Ken Paradise, Larry Harper, Mary Lesh, Mike Toles, Natasha Stansel, Norm Paschel, Norma Nichols, Richard Nichols, Roger Luo, Susan Morris and Steve Taylor.

Here are the details from last month’s Digital Image Group meeting on November 20th. Actually, this is more than the “minutes” it is a group of links that lead you to the DIG website to view all the work shown last month, both the digital images and the digital video presentations.

A.      If you wish to cut to the chase, go to http://www.digitalimagegroup.org/photo/index.php?folder=/2008/2008-11_November/ to view images made by 9 of our presenters in November, including Norma Nichols, Ken & Diana Paradise, Natasha Stansel, Roger Luo, Mary Lesh, Don Grider, Gina Wilson, Mike Toles and Diane Yancey.

B.      To view the three videos shown last month by Bess & Joe Orenzow, Douglas Dannels and Steve Taylor, please go to http://www.digitalimagegroup.org/ where you will see all three flash videos featured on the front page. Stay tuned below for more specific information. While we encountered a number of technical difficulties and setbacks in updating the DIG website for video, they have now been overcome so take a few minutes to wander through.

 Below are specific links and a description of the content from last month’s Digital Image Group meeting. With the permission of the participants, we are archiving and watermarking all images from each meeting so they can be enjoyed many times, as a review for those who attended the meetings, and to update those of you who can’t make it to the meetings. If your work is presented here, please feel free to link to your imagery from your own website and/or send the links to your friends.

Presentations are in the order in which they took place:

1. Norma Nichols presented “Image Experiments,” several random images she made using a variety of techniques and 3^rd Party plug-ins in Photoshop.
   
2. Richard Nichols gave a brief tutorial on “how to resize images using Irfanview.” Irfanview is one of the best FREE PC-based image viewers in existence. Irfanview makes very high quality size-downs from digital camera originals using the IMAGE: Resize/Resample menu item. It allows you to resize many images simultaneously using the Batch Conversion/ Rename command. Irfanview can be downloaded free from www.irfanview.com . It is a very mature software application, and has been available on the Internet for at least 12 years. You may view a tutorial on resizing images with this software at http://www.somewhere-in-time.net/tutorial/irfanview/ .
   
3. Doug Dannels, a local sculptor, artisan and landscape artist, showed a digital video presentation entitled “Right-Brained Artist in a Left-Brained World,” created by his son Miko Dannels. Doug and Miko are members of a very creative family of artists living here in downtown Douglasville. The video is narrated by Doug in which he expresses some of his philosophy and history as an artist.
   
4. Ken and Diana Paradise presented “Alaska Pics” from their recent travels to the beautiful backwoods areas of Alaska. Their presentation included rugged landscapes and wild animals indigenous to the far reaches of the Alaskan wilderness.
   
5. Bess and Joe Orenzow of Orenzow Productions showed a beautiful and spiritually-touching video called Brynn’s Book. This multimedia collage with narration and music celebrates the joys and sadness of life through the eyes of a mother who has lost her child through disease, yet relishes the gift of her life while it lasted.
   
6. Natasha Stansel wowed the audience with her “Zoom and Spin” images. She described her technique as “zooming the lens while rotating the camera” to achieve some stunning results.
   
7. Roger Luo, who drives well over an hour from north east Atlanta to attend our meetings, entitled his presentation “Wandering Around.” His imagery was taken from the Atlanta Botanical Garden and consisted of both the flora and fauna he found there on August 30^th this year,  the same day that the Sweetwater Camera Club had its “lens baby field trip to the botanical garden. Roger discussed the problems with photo equipment that malfunctions and mistakes of over-exposure that can sometimes lead to interesting results.
   
8. Mary Lesh gave an informative demonstration entitled “Using Photomatix HDR (High Dynamic Range) software.” She presented several “before and after” images which are now uploaded on-line. The software retails on-line for $99 and can be purchased from http://www.hdrsoft.com/ . This website also shows some dramatic results created by making at least 3 images of the same subject while your camera is mounted on a tripod. The first might be 1 or 2 f-stops underexposed. The second exposure would be normal. The third exposure would be one or two f-stops overexposed.
   The reason for doing that is to record a great amount of detail in the shadows and highlights, then combine all the images to make a visual simulation of what your eye normally sees in a scene that cannot be correctly rendered by the digital sensor in a digital camera.
   Another similar piece of software which may be even more up-to-date costs $55 and is called Dynamic-PHOTO HDR and can be tested and obtained from http://www.mediachance.com/hdri/index.html
   
9. Don Grider and Norm Paschal visited us from the Cobb Photographic Society where Don is the President of the club and Norm just happens to be the Photographer of the Year this year. They were both interested in the discussion of HDR image making. Don showed us his “High Dynamic Range Prints” (before-and-after prints) made using HDR software. You can view them at http://www.digitalimagegroup.org/photo/index.php?folder=/2008/2008-11_November/06_DonGrider/ . It is obvious that one of the short-comings of photography is the loss of detail in the sky when a scene is otherwise correctly exposed. HDR allows for dramatic clouds and expanded, amplified detail in the dark areas of a picture.
   
10. Gina Sue Wilson presented images made in and around Niagara Falls on the Canadian side of the falls. Gina did a great job of capturing the forcefulness of the falls, the turbulent mist, rugged currents and the beautiful landscape around this natural wonder. Her images show the beauty of the skies above the falls as well.
    
11. Michael Toles, who is a professional portrait photographer, presented quite a number of his stunning “Models, Portraits and Character Studies.” His work with people shows a tremendous respect for lighting and posing of models. He captures mood and elegance. Although Mike didn’t show all of his portfolio, we have uploaded 120 of his images to the Digital Image Group website. You can view them at http://www.digitalimagegroup.org/photo/index.php?folder=/2008/2008-11_November/08_MikeToles/&page=all
    
12. Diane Yancey showed us “Far Away Places & Flowers.” She has very colorful and well composed images from several of her recent travels and outings. Diane also showed a few Niagara Falls images, although they don’t appear in the DIG Gallery this month.
    
13. Steve Taylor, our last presenter for the evening, showed a complex and very romantic wedding album in PowerPoint format entitled “Wedding Book.” The wedding took place in central England at the Dumbleton Hall Hotel. Steve combined a number of photographic and post-production techniques including both monochrome and color collages. The virtual wedding album has been uploaded to the DIG website in Flash Video format at  http://www.digitalimagegroup.org/galleries/dig-digital-video/63-video/153-taylor .

Please take some time to study each of these visual artists’ offerings. Then get motivated, get out and craft some of your own to show us all. Improve your eyes, mind and visual communication techniques. If you can’t make it to this meeting, the next one will be on Thursday, January 15^th, 2009.

Hope to see you and perhaps some of your work there!

Richard