Walker Evans used say as advice to his students: "Seek a cultivated life and this will become apparent in your photos". On Saturday 30-03-2019 the available members of our team who had no other obligations visited 3 exhibitions in Katerini. They first visited in the mansion/former house of D.J.Tsalopoulos, the painting exhibition titled: "From Parthenis to the Moralis" organized by the Municipality of Katerini and the Gallery of George N. Vogiatzoglou in collaboration with the Organization of Culture, coordinated by Mr. Manos Stefanidis. Then, a visit was made to the Civic School of Katerini, where the other two exhibitions were housed. The first one was dubbed: "Handmade dolls with authentic national cost um es of heroes of 1821" by Nitsa and Lisa Xanthopoulou, in which the creator guided us. The last exhibition we visited was the exhibition of the photography department of the Irida Pierides Muses Center, theme...

Because of the holidays for the Carnival and a minor illness, two of meetings were lost... This time, however, we were faithful to our appointment. We first got to know the life and work of Nikos Economopoulos, a photographer who is a member of the famous agency Magnum! Of course, his participation in this is an honour for our country. We even saw a book by the Photographic Circle, the association founded by Platon Rivellis, which also contained his own photographs! Here is an element of his rich biography that isn’t as commonly known! We continued with the critique of the shots taken by our members. We finished the theoretical part of our meeting having learned some facts about the use of filters. Quiz: what colour filter should we use to distinguish blue from green tones in black and white photography? Some filters like the ND (neutral density) & polarizing filters are useful even in the digital age! Taking advantage of the fact that our meeting was in the afternoon, as ...

The time has come for us to demonstrate our work! We loaded up the necessary equipment and set up our exhibition in Eleftherias Square in Katerini. Here are some shots of our exhibition:

In today's meeting we continued our efforts of getting to know Henri Cartier Bresson by watching a presentation of his biography, accompanied by several of his photos. Afterwards we had lots fun playing some kind of tag: Then we continued and revisited a subject we had explored previously, the flash. This time we focused on the stroboscopic flash. Here are some of the shots we took: Unfortunately, the lack of a proper background led to reflections that reduced the quality of the images. We hope that the next time we’ll think of a way to overcome this obstacle!

Our afternoon meetings continue, as we’re experimenting with the flash, and we need the area to be dark. There’s nothing better than starting off with a game. And that’s what we did!  Afterwards we watched a video in which Plato Rivellis presented the work of Henri Cartier Bresson. The greatest part of the meeting however, was dedicated to the technical matters of the flash and  rear curtain sync.  Here are two photos (in two versions each) that we took:

This meeting was rather short-lived, as most members of the group were going to travel to Bucharest the next day. To begin, we perused some wedding photos which were not the classic, standard shots we are all used to. Demonstrating there is some leeway for someone who wants to express themselves artistically, even in areas of applied photography.  The main topic we occupied ourselves with was the flash. We learned some basic things about its function, such as that it can be used to “freeze” an image. We conducted a little experiment in which we threw flour in to the air and tried to “freeze” its movement whilst it was falling. And of course, we did this in the dark of the day. Although the exposure time was quite long, the image was indeed “frozen”, as the shutter speed does not affect the exposure when using the flash, it only does so for ambient lighting.

Today’s meeting was rather different from the rest. The main topic we discussed was the planning of an educational visit to Athens. For this reason we had brought with us our parents, since they are our ... financial sponsors! Afterwards we went out for a while in the school yard and saw the International Space Station passing above us in the night sky! And we could not lose the opportunity to play a game. In the picture below you can see us trying to guess which story is true and which is not. This was followed by a visit to a village tavern.

Sunday morning, at 10:45 we had our regular appointment, as every Sunday. We started with a presentation of Eugene Atget, a “laborer” photographer, considering that for many years he carried a 20kg suitcase to every corner of Paris. The result of his work, simply amazing! And yet, he worked in the 19th century and his camera captured pictures on glass plates, not even on film! The comparison with the current technological era, with all its fascinating conveniences, is immeasurable Then we were invited or rather ... we were challenged by our teacher, to take the same pictures as the ones we had been given. To do this we had to analyze the photos in terms of photographic technique and then operate the schools camera, the Nikon D3200, ourselves. Down below are the first photos we were given and the ones we shot: For this shot to be taken you need the following: Slow shutter speed to create the ghost effect , closed aperture to have a large depth of field and a tripod to keep t...