Meet the gang!
MEMBERS' PORTFOLIOS
MEMBER PROFILE:
I have been a keen photographer since 1987 starting with slides and mono prints in South Africa.
Steve Brien (Competition Secretary)
I've been a member of the Photographic Society of South Africa
and other various clubs over the years:
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Johannesburg Camera Club,
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Pretoria Camera Club,
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Randburg Camera Club, and
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Klerksdorp Camera Club which 2 of my colleagues and I founded mid 1987.
I have never really specialised in any one facet of photography but I have a passion for looking at subjects differently.
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To me photography is an art form which allows me to be creative with the images I take.
MEMBER PROFILE:
Katherine Burrows
I have been interested in photography since my early 20's, mainly using my grandmother's Kodak Brownie 127 and upgrading to SLR with a Pentax in 1976.
I purchased my first digital camera, a Canon EOS 1200D, in 2014 and have since progressed to the Canon EOS 7D Mk ll.
Until joining this Camera Club, I mainly set my camera to auto and never used any software to process the images.
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But, thanks mainly to the club members, I have progressed to understanding many of the camera's features. Although I am far from being an expert, I just enjoy photography and especially landscapes.
I also love cameras and own a collection of over 50 vintage and modern cameras, the oldest dating from 1914.
David Heard
MEMBER PROFILE:
I first got interested in photography back in the sixties, as my uncle was a keen amateur photographer who did a lot of weddings and portraits. He did his own developing and printing, though I wasn't directly involved in it.
I bought my first SLR camera in the seventies, which was a Praktica LB model, and I enjoyed taking black and white photos, developing and printing them in my own darkroom.
I remember going to several workshops with fellow enthusiasts from the steelworks, held by a photographer in Pontybodkin. They included microscopy (using an extension tube) as well as modelling sessions.
The Science Fiction one was good fun; we had a black card background, which we back-lit and pricked holes in with a dart. Now we had a starry backdrop, and we took dramatic pictures of model spaceships
On my retirement in 2017 I joined Coedpoeth and Minera Camera Club to learn more about photography, and by the end of the year I was appointed Chairman. It's been very rewarding all the way, and our membership has grown steadily from the half-dozen or so we had at the time.
I appreciate our good committee, who've made that possible. I have tried to make it a club for the members, not for the chairman! Mike and I worked very hard to keep things going during Covid, and it's great to see the progress since then.
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Subjects
I like to photograph landscapes and wildlife, as well as still-life scenes. To get the Grebes picture and other wildlife shots, I spent 5 or 6 hours at a time at my local pool.
I'm very interested in old industrial sites such as Brymbo Steelworks where I worked for 22 years. I'm getting out my old B & W photos of the place and creating a series of paintings based on them, which I'll donate to the Brymbo Heritage Trust as a way to give back to my community.
I believe that art runs alongside photography, as composition is key to both of them. I've learned a lot about both since 2017, and I'm still enjoying my photography.
Mike Lloyd Jones
I’ve been interested in photography for many years but haven't been able to get out there with a camera due to work commitments, (sometimes life just gets in the way).
MEMBER PROFILE:
When I retired in 2016, I decided to make a concerted effort, after my wife suggested she’d buy me a camera as a Christmas present. On hearing about a local camera club, I made some enquiries and met another enthusiast called David Heard, now our chairman.
They were looking for members to help run the club and I was asked if I would be interested in becoming the secretary, and I of course said yes. This was in 2017 and that's when our camera club was born.