David Sherwood

Demonstration and Lecture

Sunday October 29th 2006

David Sherwood comes to us from Bury St Edmunds Photographic Society of which is chair. He will be teaching us how to take better digital photographs of our ceramics.

David Sherwood has a wide range of experience and expertise in photography, both film and digital, and the use of relevant software. He is a very experienced lecturer/demonstrator and believes that the audience should not only enjoy and learn from the day but should dictate the content and timing through their questions and comments.

In his presentation, which will be based on actually doing the things he is talking about, David will look at the selection and use of a camera; the use of items available in almost every household to provide background and lighting, the use of image manipulation software to get the best image and how to generate a print that most closely represents the object of all your efforts.

Bury St Edmunds Photographic Society can be found at
www.burysteds-photosoc.org.uk

Review

It was a day biased more towards lecture than demonstration. For those who missed it, I'm afraid there is no magic shortcut to taking professional quality photographs. David gave us a number of hints and suggestions but the burden of his talk was about looking critically at the photographs we take. Detach your potter's sensibilities for a moment and look at the photograph as a photograph. Does it say what you want it to? David felt that most photographs he has seen of ceramics fail this scrutiny. When I started to look at books on ceramics with this newly critical eye, I could see what he meant. Time will tell whether our photographs will improve as a result but there is certainly room to improvement.