Steve will put up the winners in the various digital categories.

After tea we watched four educational videos on various aspects of Photoshop … always of interest, as much information covers questions we are too afraid to ask!

Our Audio Visual Meeting on 31st March will be hosting members of Hermanus Photograpic Society’s av section.  Even though you might not make audio-visuals, you are most welcome to attend these meetings, and I’m sure this one will prove to be most enjoyable.

An e-mail has been sent to everyone concerning our two outings in March, as well as other snippets regarding subs and the Cape Photographers Congress.  Please contact Nettie at nettie28@iafrica.com should you need more information.

The outing this month takes place at the Wijnland Auto Museum (entrance R50) which is situated next to the Cape Garden Centre (Exit 34 on the N1). Meet there at 9.30am and bring all your lenses, as well as a hat and a bottle of water!

With reference to the Rally which was to have taken place on Sat. 13th March  - please note that it has been moved to Saturday 27th March – meet at the parking area of the Taal Monument in Paarl at 9.30am.  Everyone will receive a list of clues/subjects to photograph (only one image per clue allowed!).  We are hoping to receive ‘throw-away’ cameras (with film and a certain number of pics), but please bring your normal camera anyway.

Another outing planned, for next  month, is the ‘Cape Carnival’ outing on Saturday 20th March – meet at the Adderley Street entrance to the Company Gardens (next to St. George’s Cathedral) at 2.30pm.

Our normal audio-visual evening will be held on Wed. 24th February – everyone is welcome.

The judges for the evening – Mary, Andre, Frank and Gail – had prints, slides and over 100 digital imgages to judge!  They moved it along at a good pace – results will be posted separately by Steve.

After tea, Roger Lee gave us a very well thought-out talk on the basics of understanding the technology of digital cameras – we thank him for being willing to give us this lecture, which, I am sure, helped many of us understand things we are too scared to ask!

Next month’s competition set subject is ‘Urban Decay’ … so let’s get clicking!

After tea Steve Crane gave a short talk on two aspects of Photoshop – changing digital images into Black and White; and changing a particular part of a B&W image into colour.  Links to these techniques can be found here.

Details of the outings on 23rd January (US ‘Jool’) and 30th January (Full Moon) will be sent to members by e-mail.

Next month’s set subject is ‘Candy/Sweets’ – give it a try – you’ll be amazed at how creative you can be!

We started off watching an AV by Noeleen Kutash, her first one ever and everyone agreed that it was very well done for a first attempt. Neels Beyers brought along one or two AVs but the details escape me right now. Johan Beyers was visiting from Paarl again and I think many members hope he will continue to be a regular visitor. He showed us an inspiring AV made from landscape photos he took on a recent trip to the USA. It was full of buttes, mesas, canyons, arches and other incredible landscape features; also featured were some ancient cliff dwellings that Noeleen informed us were used by the Anasazi. André du Toit showed an AV made from images he took at a bird photography workshop in the Kalahari; he also brought us a box of his delicious apples.

After tea Irmel demonstrated how to incorporate movement into AVs using Wings Platinum. Although her demonstration used multiple picture tracks, she explained that the same effect can be achieved with the single picture track of the free basic version that many of us use.

As a photographer, I know what it feels like to have my images used without my permission. Those of us who earn a living selling photos are particularly sensitive to Copyright infringement. Yet, countless times, I see photographers using illegal music in their public slide shows. It’s time to put an end to that practice.

Reading this article made me realise that even if you show your AVs only at club meetings you should not use music that you are not licensed to use. Current feeling in the club is that using any music is acceptable if you are not going to show your AVs at public venues for which admission is being charged. Seemingly this is not the case.

KVR Audio emerged many years ago as an excellent source of drumkits, samples, loops, sound banks and other tools for creating your own music. Many of the downloads are free and free of any complicated rights for commercial use.

Freesound Project is a collaborative collection of sounds and loops released under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. You have to check each track to see whether they are available for commercial use or not, but all tracks are available for non-commercial use.

BeatSuite offers a bunch of free royalty free tracks. The BeatSuite offerings come with a couple of caveats. The tracks are free for non-commercial use. The tracks tend to be lower quality than pay versions of the same loops. Registration is required in order to access free tracks.

Meanrabbit offers a bunch of great sounds you can loop or use to build loops. Many of the sounds included are part of the urban landscape, from trains to telephones, but there are also some fairly unique sounds available too.

Need a worry-free background track for a multimedia project, or just some new tunes to work into your daily mix? The Free Music Archive, a project of indie freeform station WFMU, has downloads and streams galore.