I went to the Southend Photographic Society's meeting again last night. This time it was a talk by one of the members on HDR photography. I don't think I knew what this was before we started.
It was pretty clear that the member concerned was not much good when it came to delivering a lecture. He did a lot of faffing about on a screen that I could barely read (it was projected onto a big screen) and he didn't really explain what was going on with regard to there being more than one almost identical image taken by "bracketing" (I had come across this expression on my course). After he finished his talk, we had a break and a cup of tea and he and his wife then showed us some of their prints of HDR photos. This was better, but it became apparent (to me, at any rate) that his wife was at least as skilful a photographer as he was, and also rather better at explaining stuff.
The society is very male dominated and I reckon that at almost 70, I'm of below average age. At one point one of the prints on display was of Blackpool Tower, and one of the old guys standing near me muttered "I'm surprised they still let us call it Blackpool." FFS.
I don't think I'm going to go again. The first time, when there was a (young) visiting speaker giving a talk about his really good wildlife photographs, it was right up my street. But on the two occasions since then, it's been pretty dull and shambolic. I reckon I'll benefit more by looking around the photography pages on this forum and the Talk Photography forum I've recently joined.
