Sharp Focus May 2025

FROM THE CHAIR

May 2025

Dear Members

What a treat this month has been for creative spirits! The beautiful pet photography submitted for our monthly theme was both heartwarming and inspiring – thank you to everyone who contributed. It’s always a pleasure to see the personality, patience, and skill that shines through in each image. The variety of work submitted in the digital category this month was equally impressive, showcasing the diverse talents within our club. Keep them coming!

A very warm welcome to our three new members – it’s wonderful to have you on board. We look forward to seeing your unique perspectives and creativity added to our growing community.

Just a quick note that we are preparing to submit our selection for the Interclub competition by the end of June. We’ll be reviewing all entries carefully and will share the final list of images to be submitted with the club shortly thereafter. It’s a great opportunity to represent our club and celebrate the outstanding work we create together.

On another exciting note, the PSSA Congress will be held in Struisbaai from 11–15 August this year. I highly encourage you to consider attending if you’re able—there will be fantastic photographic opportunities across a range of genres including portraits, landscapes, nature, and street photography, as well as presentations by some of South Africa’s leading names in photography. I’ll be attending myself and will be sure to bring back a full report and plenty of inspiration to share!

Keep shooting, keep sharing, and keep pushing the boundaries of your creativity.

Warm regards,

Betzi

PSSA Congress 2025 at Struisbaai. 11-15th August

This is an amazing time and location for photographers as the Canola fields glow, the seas are stormy and the clouds full of menace. The special early bird price of R3900 includes all lectures, outings, photoshoots, teas, lunches, dinners, opening event Monday and Honours Banquet Friday, and the offer ends 31st May. It’s almost worth cancelling my Kruger trip for.

Full program details click here https://pssa.co.za/2025-pssa-national-congress/

Salons

The word salon is from the French, “reception room“. Often referring to a gathering place where ideas are shared and education takes place.

There are 3 Club Salons with a deadline coming up shortly, Kriel, Ballito and TAF. Plus the final one of the PSSA calendar year, for which PSSA invites, and we encourage, junior (1 Star to 3 Star) members of an affiliated PSSA Club (we are) to enter for free! If there is anyone new to salons who needs help just put a plea on the WhatsApp group and we will organise a quick tutorial with one of the more senior members.
For a full list of Salons please click here https://pssa.co.za/pssa-salons/

Please enter Salons if you have the portfolio and time, as the points go towards our standing at a national level. Presently we are 6th out of 17 in the Western Cape and 47th nationally.

Themes

Upcoming themes you could/should be researching and working on….

July – Nightscape.
August – Churches and Graveyards.
September – Black and White Street.
Click here to view the full list of themes, workshops and outings.

Theme for June – High Contrast Mono – submission date 16th June!!!!!!

This technique, for me, is the pinnacle of photography. The one to evoke a strong sense of drama, emotional intensity, and artistic impact, and Google AI agrees.

To guide us through the topic, I am recommending watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdNlBS8OAYg and then following the additional comments from Peter Brandt as it pertains to the judging of our entries.

Category 1: High contrast to exaggerate the natural contrast of a scene and to bring out its graphic qualities.

Category 2: A naturally very contrasting scene that is photographed in such a way as to exaggerate its nature – which may be in combination with the high contrast processing, but typically would be less graphically stylised and allow for more mid-tones.

The photos and explanations that follow, deviate only slightly from the excellent video that Margaret has found for you to look at – my only alterations to the material in the video are to suggest that making high contrast images does not require specific photographic equipment as suggested in the video (go and shoot with your cell, or a pinhole camera, if you have to!), and to suggest that there is more nuance permitted between the blacks and whites, i.e. there are situations where you would want / allow for more greys – see category 2, below.

Other than that I would add that you will see one steadfast rule repeatedly broken in the photos: blow-outs and informationless blacks are permitted in high-contrast images, especially the ones that move more into design than faithful representation (see category 1, below). Keep in mind that all high contrast photography is a marriage between representational photography and design.

Category 1
Here high contrast is used to exaggerate the natural contrast of a scene and to bring out its graphic qualities. Tones and contrasts are exaggerated for dramatic / graphic effect, and in order to bring out all the formal qualities that is native to mono: line, form, shape, texture, pattern, tone. There is a lot of freedom in this approach, so enjoy! But always be careful to not muddy the scene – your process should bring clarity, not take it away. (see the examples in the folder)

Category 2
These are typically very contrasty scenes that are photographed in such a way as to accentuate their contrasty nature, for which reason they would often involve silhouette situations, or scenes where there is diametric tonal opposition between figure and ground. This is not to say that these images would not lean on some high contrast processing, but typically would be more less graphically stylised and allow for more mid-tones (see the examples in the folder).

Download further example picture folders here https://fishhoekphotoclub.co.za/downloads/high-contrast.zip

To extract a ZIP file in Windows, right-click the ZIP file, select “Extract All…”, and choose the location where you want to save the extracted files. You can also double-click the ZIP file to open it directly in Windows Explorer, then drag and drop the files you want to extract to their desired location.
To extract a ZIP file on a Mac, simply double-click the file. The Archive Utility will automatically open and extract the contents to a new folder in the same location as the ZIP file.

I look forward to seeing some dramatic images this month – but what a learning curve! MS.

How It Was Done

Thanks to Derek for this insight.

First thing to do is go to a cool photogenic location – this is De Kelders near Gansbaai. Then hope for the right conditions – moody skies, big surf, cool light. Slap on an ND filter, clip camera onto tripod and set the exposure. I wanted to capture the movement of the ocean and spray of the waves breaking over the rocks but not have it too milky the way a longer exposure would render it.

Original RAW file. It’s quite dark but importantly the breaking wave in the centre is not blown out.

Opening in LightRoom, these are the basic edits I made.

Next was masking out the areas that needed a bit of work. A few highlighted next.

The back of the bench was much brighter so I reduced the exposure.

The whole foreground area was too dark. Not the bench though so that was excluded from the mask.

This little area needed more work so another mask was added.

This patch of rock was too dark so I lifted the shadows in the 4th mask. (Mask 3 I haven’t screenshotted but a gradient mask darkened up the left side which was a little bright).

Then I decided to see if I preferred it in monochrome and I thought it had more impact this way.

May Results (Theme-Pets)

Many thanks to this months Judging Panel – Keith, Lorne, Betzi and both Peters. Big shout out to Peter Franklin who stepped in for his first ever co-comms at the meeting and did a great job.

You can view all the submissions by going to Flickr – just click here