David of Leigh Estuary u3a
"As a u3a, Leigh Estuary u3a have been going since 2012 and our photography group was one of those there from the start. We are a small group of enthusiastic photographers with a variety of interests which often influence our decisions on subjects we want to photograph. Several are keen naturalists often seeking out birds, insects, butterflies, and small mammals amongst other things.
Graham, also a local RSPB group leader, specialises in wildlife photography. We are lucky to live on this part of the Essex coast as, in winter, we have thousands of Brent Geese and wading birds that arrive from their High Arctic breeding grounds to spend the winter with us. This always gives a chance of some great photographs, and this is especially true each season with one of his favourite little wading birds, the Sanderling. You can usually rely on Richard to capture a stunning shot of a somewhat smaller creature, the bumble bee, a topic he has been studying over the last few years and has grown to love; but he’d best watch out since Sue recently had her fabulous shot of a bee featured on the Trust’s ‘Found In Nature’ web page.
We meet once a month, on the second Friday morning. Our meetings comprise alternate months out and about taking photographs and then inside reviewing and talking them over. We also set ourselves a couple of subjects for members to capture suitable pictures they consider meet the brief and for review at the next indoor gathering. These can be straight forward topics like ‘My Garden’ or ‘Containers’ or more challenging like this month's ‘Looking Up/Down’ and ‘Perceptions of Colour’. Since we sometimes struggle to come up with new ideas for topics, we are planning to use those topics set for the u3a Eye competition as a focus for what we might set as challenges. It has been suggested that maybe Third Age Matters should select a ‘photo of the month’ from those published to give us something to which to aim and aspire.
Occasionally we get to see a particularly great photo, like Ruth’s ‘patterns’ shot featured on the Trust’s webpage, which we all agree is above our average and, more recently, we have been talking over how we can promote our photos from that average and ordinary snapshot into something with a lot more appeal and pizzazz. Not that a snapshot is always a bad thing as sometimes you want a photo to simply be a record or memory of an event.
Our members use a wide range of equipment from SLR cameras with those huge lenses you sometimes see through to camera phones. One thing we have discovered is it is not necessarily the equipment you use but how you see and compose the photo that matters. As Ansel Adams said “The single most important component of a camera is the 12 inches behind it.”
Our outdoor meetings always end up with a cuppa and chat in a nearby café; of course all chat strictly photographic!"
