GIIP meeting

A couple of weekends ago (yes I know I yet again have been very slow posting anything new) I went to the second meeting of GIIP (Get Involved In Photography) at my church. GIIP is a group of people who get together once a month or so to learn and share stuff about photography. At the first meeting we were given an assignment, we each had to take 3 photos on the theme of Spring and print them out so we can all look at them and give constructive feedback on the photos.


So for the few weeks before the meeting I was busy trying to come up with some interesting photos of Spring. It was already too late to catch the cherry blossoms and the tulips and daffodils were a little past their best. I took a few walks around Vancouver taking photos of ducklings and gosling but none of them were very good. Then one Sunday afternoon I took a long walk up to Queen Elizabeth Park where I found a bunch of flowers that were still looking pretty good. So I snapped a bunch of photos of them and a few of them turned out OK. Well, really I only liked one of them but was running a bit short on time so selected two of them as candidates for my photo assignment.


With time running out and inspiration still being somewhat elusive I decided to turn to the subject of a fair number of my photos, food. I thought about what food reminds me of Spring, and the first thing to come to mind was rhubarb. Excellent I can make something with rhubarb in it and take a photo of it. And for that added cheesy bit of creativity I thought maybe I could include the springform pan that Shannon and Lucas gave me at their farewell evening. So now I needed a recipe that would use rhubarb and a springform pan. I decided maybe a rhubarb cheesecake would work well, I had never heard of a rhubarb cheesecake but thought maybe it would work OK. So I did a bit of a google search and was surprised to find a bunch of recipes for rhubarb baked cheesecake. The next day I went off to the supermarket and bought the necessary ingredients and set to making the cheesecake. Actually before I started making it I thought I would try taking a few photos of just the rhubarb on my coffee table, just in case the cheesecake didn't look very good. I took a bunch of the rhubarb and the springform pan together too, trying to be all arty but they looked kind of stupid. Anyway, I baked the cheesecake only to find that it didn't really photograph all that well, just as well I took the photos of the rhubarb beforehand. The best photo of the rhubarb unfortunately was taken at a bit of an angle and the corner of the table made the photo look not so good. So I kind of cheated and rotated the image a bit and replaced the corner of the table with clone tool. Much better. So now I had my three photos and I was ready to get critiqued, well OK I wasn't really looking forward to the critiquing so much.


As part of the critiquing process the group had to choose their favourite of each person's 3 photos, and that photo is then going to be printed out real big, framed and hung on the wall in the foyer at church. And what photo did they choose of mine? The rhubarb. So maybe I do have an artistic bone in my body somewhere after all.

Next month the GIIP group is taking an early morning outing to Jericho Park to take photos together. The meeting time is 7am. Sadly I am going to have to miss it as I will be in Colorado that weekend with Tiffany where I will finally get to meet her family. OK I am not at all sad about that really, I would much rather be with Tiffany, and 7am that is just crazy.