Ashford Photographic Society

APS members' smartphone photography workshop 21 March 2024

26 March 2024

Report from the club workshop in Faversham

Smartphones are ever more important in all our day-to-day photographic practice, so we held a workshop for our members to sharpen their skills in this area. The workshop was organised and led by two of our members, Anthony Baines ARPS EFIAP and Julie Elmes LRPS. Anthony regularly enters smartphone images into our competitions and has been very successful with them. Julie is a professional instructor in smartphone photography with Jet Black Squares. We were very fortunate that Anthony and Julie were delighted to offer their expertise for the session.

The 8 attendees for the workshop met with the leaders at Creek Creative in Faversham for a social coffee before the start. Julie began the workshop with an excellent introduction to using iPhone and Android cameras and the phone manufacturers' apps that go with them.

After that, we all headed off to Faversham Creek for a photowalk along the footpath, taking advantage of the myriad photo opportunities especially as we passed through Iron Wharf Shipyard. Along the way, everyone found plenty to catch their eye.

Both leaders suggested pictures and styles to try, and why you might choose them for any particular subject. Among these, we tried, for instance, variations on portrait modes; panoramas including clever tricks allowing a subject to appear twice in the same picture; holding the camera lens as close as possible to a reflective surface to get more effective reflections, and so on.

We also worked with apps for slow exposures and multiple exposures for creative effects such as in-camera movement (ICM) and making abstracts by moving the camera while taking multiple exposures overlaid on each other. Finally, we finished with a session on processing our images using Snapseed to give a final look to them.

As one of our members commented, your phone isn't so much a phone these days, it is a camera you can take calls on.

In all, it was an extremely enjoyable session, very sociable and with plenty of laughs as well as learning. Thank you to all who came along and to our workshop leaders. We are excited to see more of your smartphone images in the future.

Written by Anthony Baines ARPS EFIAP, March 2024

What's coming up at Ashford Photographic Society?

Next five events
Date	Type	Topic	Presenter/Judge
Thursday 16-05-2024		Annual Exhibition Face-to-face meeting Hand-in: 11-05-2024	Stephen Carroll ARPS
Thursday 23-05-2024		What Is a portrait Hybrid meeting	Thomas Peck
Thursday 30-05-2024		Awards Night with Chris Dixon Ashford Council Arts Officer Face-to-face meeting	Committee
Saturday 10-08-2024		Summer PDI - My Ashford - Internal Face-to-face meeting Hand-in: 31-07-2024	Members
Thursday 05-09-2024		The life of a hare Hybrid meeting	Russell Miles

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