Wollongong photographer Diane Epoff talks about her favourite images.

Members of the Wollongong Camera Club learnt the finer details of printing on materials such as tissues and aluminium foil in a class held earlier this month.

The presentation, run by Mike Lincoln from the Illawarra Senior College, challenged members to push the boundaries of what you can print on, showing examples of photos printed onto tissues, silver and gold-coloured paper, baking paper and aluminium foil, just to name a few. 

“With the Alfoil, I ran it through the printer a few times, then baked it in the oven for a few hours to finish it,” Lincoln explained.

The Camera Club regularly invites guest presenters in to give the members insights into new trends, knowledge and ways of thinking about photography. Upcoming presentations cover such topics as new printer technology, black and white photography and the techniques involved in wedding photography. Another feature of the club is monthly photographic competitions between members. The themes for this month’s competition are ‘Still Life’ and ‘Out of the Ordinary’.

“It’s all fun, it’s a friendly competition. I don’t care if somebody else has got more points than me, or does better than me. Look, we all bomb out somewhere along the line! It’s all good, and we enjoy it,” said Meers.

One category of the monthly competition is dedicated specifically to digital photography, an area which has seen great growth in the club.

“When I first started at the club five years ago, we had a membership of about 25. Since the beginning of last year, when we introduced the EDIs [Electronically Displayed Images], our club has grown to about 65 people. In two years, up to date, we’ve grown about 30% because of digital photograph,” Meers said.

The club also has strong connections to the Illawarra community, with club members acting as photographers for local events such as the Thirroul Festival and Mount Kembla Festival.

Wollongong Camera Club meets on the second and forth Tuesday of every month at Figtree Heights Primary School, and photographers of all ages and skill level are welcome, assures Meers.

“Nobody in the Wollongong Camera Club is professional; we’re all amateurs. We’ve all got normal real jobs and we just get together because we’re all like minded and it’s a great way socially to meet new people.”

The second round of the Bluescope Steel Illawarra Regional Junior Surfing Series was held last weekend, and with the next round only a few weeks away, surf photographer Don Jonceski has been kept busy shooting the surfers in action.

Jonceski, who’s been taking surf shots on and off for the last twenty years, is the official photographer for the competition, and says that there’s a few elements involved in capturing a great surf shot. One pretty important factor, he says, is knowing your camera.

 “Given the subject is moving, you need to have a camera that can track the moving subject, and most modern digital SLR cameras have got a few different types of settings for tracking moving subjects…[and] there’s some trial and error to narrow down the best settings.”

One of the settings that need to be mastered, says Jonceski, is focus, which he says can make all the difference to the success of a shoot.

“If you’ve got the wrong settings, out of 100 shots you might get half of them sharp, compared to the right settings where you’d get probably 80% plus sharp,” he says.

Another element of the photographic process that has increased with the growth of digital technology is the post-production side, with photos edited in programs such as Adobe Photoshop. This post-editing is particularly handy when the weather isn’t so crash hot, Jonceski explained.

“If it’s really dull and overcast, it’s hard to get that [contrast], and so there’s some camera settings again where you can try and improve contrast and colour saturation. In fact almost all the time these days, to get the best out of a photo, there’s post processing.”

“There’d be some image sharpening, sometimes adjustments in colour saturation, and then depending on what the photo’s being used for, there’s a whole host of creative tools that you can use within Photoshop,” says Jonceski.

Another photographer who’s dabbling in the ways of the waves is University of Wollongong student Jobi Manson, on exchange from the United States, who believes the skill of the surfer is also a crucial factor in capturing the perfect shot.

“It’s about technique and it’s about style, and when somebody is pulling massive roundhouse carves, to be able to get them at the peak of that moment is really crucial. To find people that can surf as well as they say they can, and to be able to show that on camera is two very different things,” Manson says.

The next round of the Bluescope Steel Illawarra Regional Junior Surfing Series will be held on the 21^st June, and Don Jonceski’s photos from the first round of the competition can be found here.

Diane Epoff is a modern day quilter. But instead of using needles and thread, she uses her digital camera and Photoshop to build intricate, layered and highly personal ‘image scapes’ of the places she visits. One of her recent projects involved her mapping out Paphos Theatre in Cyprus using her digital camera and a lot of photos.

Tell us a bit about your recent work in Cyprus?

I’ve always photographed landscapes, and through my works I’m actually looking for a different way to picture the land, so using the digital camera as a means to map the whole of  ‘place’, rather than just a snapshot of place. You know, we go out and visit a place and take a snapshot and I used to do that, but I wouldn’t just take two or three or four. I’d stay in a place for hours sometimes… and I’d just keep photographing until I knew that I had what I was trying to get up here (in my head) out through the image. I squeeze in 2187 photographs into this one overall image in an effort to look at what place is in a much more intricate way than just a snapshot. So the snapshot’s now a bit redundant in my work. My photography has become very complicated and very complex.

[In Cyprus] I linked my photography to the archaeological work there by using the surveyors to help me align my photographs with the site…There’s all sorts of ways to photograph a site- using heavy equipment like booms and balloons, but I wanted to step over the site because for me my presence in place is really important when I’m taking photography. From an airplane just doesn’t cut it, I’ve got to be standing in it and looking at it, touching it almost.

So that personal connection is important for you in a photo? Is this part of your style?

My work is very subjective, it’s very personal. I don’t think my work is stylistic in any way- everything is different, each piece is very different, but basically my work is a personal response to the subject. Every image is different, and it has to be a perception of that subject, it’s not just a snapshot. It’s how I feel about it and how I respond to the subject, probably on an emotional level more than anything.

What about a few tips for those who want to get into photography or who are just starting out in photography?

Probably the most important thing would be to know what you want to photograph. Know what it is about the subject that’s got you wanting to photograph it. That comes down to something as basic as ‘I’m photographing someone standing on a football field.’ Most people would stand right back and they think they’re photographing the subject, like the person standing on the field, but actually that person might only be occupying a quarter or an eighth or a sixteenth of the frame, the rest of it is football field. In which case, what’s the football field doing to make sense of the subject? There has to be a purpose for it. Is the subject the person, and then even then I always encourage my students to hone in beyond that. If the person is the subject, what is it about that person that you’re trying to say in this photograph? Is it their expression, their body pose, is it their personality, is it what they’re doing? I would suggest that they have to ask themselves lots of questions about the meaning that they’re trying to achieve in the shot. That’s what I do.

What’s in Diane’s kit:

Nikon D200 Digital SLR Camera

12-24mm wide angle lens, for landscape shooting

18-200mm lens

Nikon SB800 Flash

Reflector Kit

Tripod

Adobe Photoshop CS3

Mac!

University of Wollongong Library staff are challenging students to capture the ‘spirit’ of the new library in a photo competition celebrating Australian Library and Information Week.

The competition, held for the first time this year, asks entrants to submit a photo which capture the ‘energy, spirit and look’ of either the new library at the Wollongong campus or libraries at other University of Wollongong campuses. Library Promotions Coordinator, Claire Collett, said the competition topic was decided upon to make people think about what their library means to them.

“The Library has been vastly improved by the extension process and is now even more of a hive of activity. We’re very proud of it and interested to see how our clients feel about it and interpret that visually,” she said.

The competition is being run in conjunction with Australian Library and Information Week, and while traditionally a writing competition is run, this year library staff decided a different approach was needed.

“We traditionally run a prose and poetry competition at this point in the year to celebrate Library and Information Week. Entries for that competition have been in decline so we decided to try something new this year,” Ms Collett said.

The competition closes on Monday 19 May, and the winners will be announced on Friday 23 May, with first prize a $150 Coles Myer gift voucher. Members of the UOW community are also encouraged to vote for their own favourite photo, with a $50 gift voucher going to the People’s Choice winner.

Jobi Manson seeks what we normally don’t notice in her photography. The surfing, travel loving and, most importantly, photo taking twenty one year old describes her style as ‘vivid, spontaneous and eccentric’, qualities all important to a good shot. Currently on exchange at the University of Wollongong from Indiana University in the United States, Jobi began her photographic odyssey by stumbling across an old camera in the attic, and her first assignment was no easy one: shooting a roll of film every day for a year.

So one roll of film every day?

Yeah, my dad hated me for a while.

What were you taking photos of?

Well a lot of what I did at the beginning was just random and candid shots, which are still what I try and achieve, but in a more articulate manner now. I know what I’m looking for. I know every time I take a picture I’m trying to capture something that somebody else wouldn’t see, and I know that sounds very clichéd, but it’s true. When you’re looking at something you want to be able to exemplify and portray it the way you see it, in a way that somebody else wouldn’t necessarily notice.

And that feeling you get when you know a photo has turned out…

Oh I get so pumped, it’s really exciting. A lot of work I’ve been doing here in Wollongong has just been for different people. Last weekend I shot a friend’s 21st, and I got a bunch of images of her just enjoying herself and her family and friends.

I saw those photos, and I notice that there were a few in there of stuff that no-one else would see. People just standing in the background talking…

She asked for stuff that would resemble actions and moments like that so I tried to encompass that in my two or three hours shooting that night. It’s just a hit or miss thing- people like it or they don’t. It appeals to different people. People tend to like the stuff I do because…for some reason or another, they tell me it stands out to them.

Speaking of stuff that stands out, where would you go to take the perfect photo?

Anywhere? The best time I had shooting was when I was in South Africa, and I was driving down the coast for a couple of weeks, and I actually stopped in this little town called Gansbaai. It’s where they do shark diving, and it’s the great white shark capital of the world. We went out on this boat, and just seeing these monstrous, monstrous creatures circling the boat, and thinking ‘Oh my god, I’m actually going to get in a cage and start shooting photos…holy s#@t!’ That was probably the most enthralling experience I’ve ever had.

What kind of personal style do your photos convey, in three words.

Vivid, spontaneous and eccentric. Not in the sense that photographers manipulate artificial light and create very artsy photos. I haven’t gone down that path yet, and I don’t know if I will. That’s not the kind of thing I enjoy. My photos are more real in a sense- I like capturing what’s real and what people can relate to and understand, and can say ‘Oh yeah, I remember that.’

What’s in Jobi’s kit:

• Canon EOS 20D
• 70-200mm lens, f2.8
• 100-400mm lens, f4.5-5.6
• Tamron 17-55mm lens, f3.5
• Fisheye 15mm lens
• Macbook Pro

In this clip, Jobi Manson talks about her three favourite photos and the story behind them.