Photographic Exhibition & Wine Fair

Several of our members are winners in the calendar competition mentioned in an email from Sue van Niekerk, who writes.

We are inviting you to our exhibition on Thursday 27th September 2012 at 18h00. Please see attached invitation.  Entry is R30.00 and Calendars will be on sale at R120 per calendar.  We look forward to seeing you at our exhibition.

The theme is Typically Stellenbosch. All the entrants of this amateur photographic competition will have works on the exhibition.  The winners will be awarded their prizes at the opening of this wine tasting exhibition.

This calendar will make a lovely gift, so please support this great fundraising event.  Our schools these days need much additional support!

You are welcome to invite friends and family.

If you would like to attend this event, the details can be found below.

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3 Reasons Why You Should Switch To Back Button Focus

James Brandon writes,

Over the past couple of years I’ve become a huge advocate for making the switch to back button focus. It was one of the most revolutionary changes I ever made to how I take pictures. It seems like such a small thing, yet it’s such a huge difference in the way your camera works. I honestly don’t know why this isn’t the standard setting on all cameras because after getting acclimated to this setting, I honestly can’t understand the meaning for or use of the ‘shutter half way down’ method.

Read more

Wiki Loves Monuments Photographic Competition

We have been asked to share the following communication with our members.

I would like inform and encourage you and your society to take part in the Wiki Loves Monuments photographic competition being run by Wikipedia with the support of Heritage Western Cape, the South African Resources Agency and Arts South Africa. The competition requires, simply for a photograph of a monument to be taken and uploaded to Wikipedia.  This competition is currently under way and will run throughout the month of September, with a special upload marathon taking place on Heritage Day 24 September at all museums.

There are prizes for the best provincial and runner up photograph with the winner vying for the national prize. The overall winner for South Africa will then be considered with the best from the rest of the world for the overall, global Wiki Loves Monuments prize.

Besides the prizes this competition will greatly aid in the documentation and protection of our heritage resources, so, again I urge you and you society to take part.

For more information please follow the link below
http://wikilovesmonuments.co.za/?pk_campaign=Centralnotice

Kind regards,

Troy Smuts

Heritage Officer (Archaeology)
Heritage Western Cape
Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport

ImageMagick: a simple, scriptable tool to convert, edit and compose Images

ImageMagick screenshot

There lots of software for customizing image files, but most of them are not simple and user-friendly. So if you’re looking for a simple and free customizing tool for images, check this one out. ImageMagick is a tool that can convert, edit, and even help you create image files, and supports tons of image formats including jpeg, gif, png, tiff, and many more.

I have been using ImageMagick for a number of years for various tasks, both by running the tools directly from the command line, and via scripts that I use to automate image processing tasks. I have been considering writing a script that you can use to automate resizing your images for submission to the club. Please comment and let me know if you would find this useful.

Visit freewaregenius to read more about ImageMagick

Wiki Loves Monuments launch event in Cape Town this Saturday

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Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) is a public competition where you can photograph the monuments that symbolise our cultural heritage (buildings, statues, shipwrecks, etc.) and share the photos with the world by uploading them to Wikimedia Commons: a database of freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute and which anyone can use. In 2012, the very first South African WLM competition will take place, organised by Wikimedia ZA.

Find out more here