It might be thought that with today’s digital cameras and the number of photographs taken daily all over the world, that photography is an easy art say compared to painting or sculpture. Well, whilst digital photography may be very accessible to anyone who has a modern camera or a smart phone, it is another thing to create and produce an image of quality. Indeed, it is possible to produce photographs easily and quickly these days but knowing how to take great images requires quite a bit of knowledge, skill and patience.

So Nick Cable’s recent talk to the club titled ‘A technical Journey’ was highly appropriate. Nick is a member of the Taunton Camera club and the prestigious f8 group. With his background in computer science, a part-time professional photographer and a leader of photographic workshops, he was well qualified to present this instructive talk about what to think about when trying to achieve good images.

Basically for Nick it comes down to the difference between the photographer as an artist and one as a data capturer. Although some of it was pretty technical there was plenty of good advice and probably the most important was ' get to know your camera'. Nick also showed some excellent images both before and after processing. His blending of images was particularly striking showing what could be obtained by combining the same image shot with different exposures. This was followed by a presentation of panoramas and some 360 degree virtual tours of some of Nick's commissions.

There was plenty here to think about and hopefully plenty of it we will be able to take on board.