P3D OSPS - First meeting Report!

["Dr. George A. Themelis" <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Needless to say... a very enjoyable first meeting of the season.
After the program (video "Times and Places Remembered"... read
my comments from last Detroit meeting) we held our first open
competition.  I had three entries.  All were taken with the RBT
S1 from our recent trip to Greece:

- Picture of flowers in front of a house in the island.  This
  was pleasant to look at, but the judges scored it low for
  "lack of center of interest".

- Picture of a small cruise boat with the ladder stretched
  in front, inviting the viewer to walk up and through the
  picture into the boat.  I remember when I took the picture...
  I sensed a good photographic opportunity but needed to act
  fast so I used my S1 which I had prefocused at 15 feet.

- Hyperstereo of a large commercial plane in O'Hare airport
  taken in the way back (Aug. 12th)  I put the S1 on a hand
  rail in front of the window and shifted it between
  exposures for a hyperstereo.  I ended up with two good
  hypers (the advantage of using a stereo camera for this job)
  and a couple of normal ones.  It is interesting to compare
  the two (normal vs. hyper)... I did it last night, dissolving
  from one to the other with my Brackett.  In the normal version
  the plane looks very imposing, big, impressive... In the
  hyper version the plane looses size-impact but gains depth
  with a nose poking through the window...
 
The judges liked the two last pictures and gave them first places.
Which made me happy :-)

We had quite a few people in attendance (around 30 I would guess)
including a couple of new faces.  People seemed to enjoy the 
meeting.  Mark Dottle did very well with a first place (which 
also got the "popular vote", i.e. most votes from people
present).  Jim Motley's daughter Debbie (some of you might have
met in Green Bay) entered slides for the first time and did
great with two awards... I see a solid photographic talent here...
Her compositions were great, I thought...

Tomorrow it's Detroit time!  Looking forward to this one too!

Reporting from Cleveland,

George Themelis