While camera technology has changed immensely in the last eight decades, the goal of members of the Victoria Camera Club has remained the same — to capture images that move people.
To celebrate its 80th anniversary, the club, the second largest in Canada, asked its members to go out on the streets on June 1 of this year to take pictures with the theme “A Day in the Life of Victoria.”
The images they captured over a span of 24 hours included the natural environment, businesses, celebrations, buildings and people going about their everyday lives.
“The images showcase the diverse interests and skills within our club,” said James Dies, the club’s president. “We see ourselves as a teaching club, with a range of activities and special interest groups for everyone.”
The club began in 1944 with about a dozen black-and-white film enthusiasts, some of whom had their own darkrooms to develop their film.
Today, it’s made up of 265 members who have embraced the latest technology for capturing images, from digital cameras to smartphones that allow users to take high-resolution pictures under different light conditions or with special effects.
“All you need to use is your creativity,” said Dies. “We can teach people about the basic elements of photography, photo editing and post-processing.”
Photographers can do their own photo editing and post-processing, using artificial intelligence software to clean up, sharpen or enhance their pictures.
Dennis Crabtree, the club’s vice-president, said the rules around using artificial intelligence to manipulate an image to enter into a competition are constantly evolving.
“It’s like a constantly changing landscape,” he said. “There are even artificial intelligence programs that will analyze and judge your pictures.”
Editing a picture can be as subtle as sharpening it or reducing reflections. But the editing software can also remove objects and people from an image — or place it somewhere else.
“You can use it to take the CN Tower out of Toronto and put it in New York, for example,” said Crabtree.
But he said that artificial intelligence can also enhance creativity, freeing up the photographer from the limitations of the camera — although there are now cameras with artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology built-in.
“Some are as much artists as photographers,” he said. “Either way, the horse is out of the shed.”
Photographers submitting photos for competitions are typically allowed to manipulate — but not remove — objects in the photograph, said Bob Law, treasurer of the club.
He said that it’s not uncommon for the judging committee to ask for the original picture, which shows the original and hidden metadata, indicating when the picture was taken, where it was taken and camera settings such a shutter speed, focal length and other details.
The committee then compares the two images to ensure any image correction falls within the rules.
“It’s part of the evolution of the art,” said Law. “Early photographers experimented by manipulating pictures in the darkroom to achieve a certain look. It’s just done digitally today.”
While early photographers would save their images on film, today’s shutterbugs back up their pictures digitally.
Law said he has 12 terabytes worth of images saved on hard drives, with all the files also loaded on “the cloud” — an off-site location accessible via the Internet as a back-up.
The club hosts internal competitions at least once a month with individuals or the club as a whole regularly entering juried international contests throughout the year.
The group is holding an 80th anniversary print show, a free public exhibition of members’ juried work, from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday until Sept. 29, in the lower level of the Bay Centre, 1150 Douglas St.
The show features more than 100 prints, plus a mini display of the A Day in the Life of Victoria collection.
For more information, go to victoriacameraclub.ca.
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