14th November, 2013
Storrington Camera Club Presentation

I'd practiced my talk a number of times and worked out that it'd take about 45 minutes leaving me plenty of time to show my camera gear and answer any questions. I clearly talked too much as I had only 3 minutes left at the end in which to field questions and hold up my camera set up!
I split the talk into 2 main sections - first I spoke about my first compact camera and housing and I showed some of the images I took with it, both in the Philippines and back in the UK. I then went on to show images I'd taken with my Canon DSLR (550D) and I explained the fact that I have to choose a lens before I go under the water so I'm limited to taking the same type of shot for the whole dive... and I have to choose between wide angle or macro.. with the ability to capture "portrait" type shots with either. I think the biggest reactions came whilst I was showing my wide-angle shots. Whale-sharks and some of the shipwreck images seemed to go down well and I enjoyed showing the bright colours of some of the more close-up stuff. There were times when I realised I didnt know why I had included an image and I ended up saying "well, I like it anyway!" which I think was a little lazy of me. It gives me the impetous to actually really closely analyse why I like an image and why I'd like to show it rather than just including images which my instinct tells me I like.
The final section of my talk showcased nudibranchs and shrimp and I followed up with a series of other macro images. The final image was, I have to admit, one of Pash's anemonefish photos, primarily because I didn't think a talk would be complete without them but second because I wanted to recognise her efforts and determination to get back in the water and take some cracking shots. Of course, I didnt explain this to the group, I simply said it was one of Pash's photos because she does clownfish shots better than me :-)