The group currently meets monthly in members' houses, and is limited to members possessing reasonable skills in photography, emailing, and the ability to store pictures on a computer.
 
The emphasis will be on sharing skills and experience with each other, as well as working on practical projects each month.

Click below for Reports:

January Meeting

February Meeting

March Meeting

April Meeting

May Photo Shoot

June Meeting

July Meeting

August  Meeting 

September Meeting

October Meeting

November Meeting

December Meeting

JANUARY REPORT
Our “Winter” competition proved hard to judge, but Eric Smith’s winning shot in Torkington Park just stood out, and there were equal seconds, another from Eric in the park, and one from Brian Beck from Hazel Grove golf course.

Afterwards, Fred Goodier led a discussion on some aspects of composition, including the merits of the rule of thirds and the golden square, and on framing through trees and arches.

Walter Mason

FEBRUARY REPORT
5 members of the group started with a small but fascinating  competition on “Wild Birds and Animals” – 1st Brian Beck –  “Otter at Chestnut Centre”; 2nd Walter Mason – “Blue Tit about to feed young”. Then followed a discussion on photographing moving objects, which led to an exploration of the many rarely used settings on modern cameras. This was a foretaste of the exercise for next month – “Exploring your camera”. Next meeting – March 20 - Brian Beck’s house.

MARCH REPORT
Brian Beck hosted an exploration of manual camera adjustments, and photos from the same spot, looking at the effect of aperture, shutter speed and ISO, on exposure and depth of field. It was fascinating to see, how four members of the group had all tackled Brian’s challenge from slightly different standpoints, and with varying success. It was interesting to compare manual cameras with modern cameras, although the later were able to achieve some of the variations, using standard or intelligent settings. Later, the discussion explored methods of creating full screen views, and telephoto adjustment, during slide shows. There was no competition this month.
  

APRIL REPORT
Our group of six found the competition on “Water” to be a hard one to judge. But from a wide variety of attractive pictures, selected Diane Saxon’s view in Chengde, China as winner, with Pam Wood’s picture of Poynton Pool second. Well done the ladies! An interesting debate ensued between advocates of “point and shoot” and devotees of hand selection of exposure conditions. We also discussed having a photo display at a u3a meeting.


MAY PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO SHOOT

Only 4 met at Lyme Park for an hour’s photo taking. It was a hazy sun, with distant mist limiting views, and the gardens had not yet opened. But there were plenty of varied subjects – how good the shots were, will be found out later! Then we retired to the timber yard cafe, and from previously printed pictures, we selected the 3 best – all of Hazel Grove gardens –  one each from Diane, Pam and Walter.

   
Walter Mason

JUNE REPORT

The competition subject for this meeting was ‘Bridges’. We had a wide variety of photographs of bridges old and new. We found selecting a winning photograph very difficult firstly due to the small number of members attending the meeting but also because we found it very difficult to focus on the quality of the photography rather than the design of the bridge itself, the setting and the backgrounds. Chris Gibson’s photograph of the Millennium Bridge on the Tyne at Newcastle was selected as a narrow winner. You can see some of our other bridges here as well.   

Diane took us through some things to think about when photographing bridges including formats, angles, contrasts and time of day. She then showed a YouTube video of some of the beautiful bridges of the world  which highlighted the advantages of taking photos at night-time. 

We finished with a look at some of the winning photographs in the 2014 Sony World Photography Competition – these were on display at Somerset House the last time Diane was in London and can now be viewed on the website at http://www.worldphoto.org/about-the-sony-world-photography-awards/national-award/

The winning photograph from the UK was a dramatic shot of the escalators at Canary Wharf station. Click here to see the photo

Diane Saxon

JULY REPORT  Local History Competition this month.
1st  'Lower Hilgate' Diane Saxon; 2nd 'Chadkirk Chapel' Pam Wood; 3rd 'Bramhall Hall' Walter Mason.


August Monthly Meeting - Competion
A display of 67 photo prints in A4 size, complemented the Art display at the August monthly meeting. They aroused much interest and favourable comment, and gave U3A members a chance to vote for their favourite photos in 2 categories; the winners’ pictures now visible on the website. It will also prove very interesting for the photographic group to discuss at a future meeting, why some pictures were popular, and others less so! Congratulations to Eric Smith and Brian Beck, for their “Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly” and  “Pisa Leaning Tower, Reflected” respectively – both stunning photographs. Hopefully the event might encourage some new members to  come along and join the group.

Walter Mason
                                                                                    Winners: