News Archive - May 2008

Mothers' Union, Eaton Bray With Edlesborough

March

At the March meeting members learned the arts of digital photography - well some of them anyway. The speaker was Eileen Bennett, who trained as a medical photographer at the Royal Society of Medicine, subsequently working in hospitals photographing operations, wounds, limbs etc.

Whilst still retaining an 'original' camera, Eileen has been using digital since 2003 and showed her work not only in photographs, but also posters, newsletters, etc.

Digital photography can be cheaper than using film, and perhaps most importantly for our members, ownership of a computer is not necessary. Photos can be printed at many commercial outlets at competitive prices and of course, no film is being used and therefore there is no film to 'run out'. Digital cameras have a card which will take 2/300 exposures and if all these have been printed or copied to a disk, the card can be wiped clean and re-used. On most cameras it is also possible to improve the quality of the photographs by reducing the quantity of photos which the card shows as being the maximum number. Eileen showed examples of the benefit of this technique; cropping photos in which a particular area is enlarged; removing 'red-eye', etc.

Prices for digital cameras can start as low as £50, and after that the 'sky is the limit.'

April

We had a very interesting talk by Patricia Yates, who is a world wide traveller. Her talk was about Tehran. When she arrived she was already prepared for the strange dress they have to wear. You must not show your ankles, so a long button through dress is a must, worn with high boots, also you must cover your head. IN addition to this, all clothing must look dark and with no flowery material.

Next stop Esfahan, where the shops display beautifully coloured items for the house in very lovely bright colours, particularly baby wear, the towels are very pretty and decorative. Then onto Shiraz which is Southern Iran and quite modern and the people seemed more affluent. They use computers in schools, but have very limited access to the world news. The students are very young and many go to university but they are very limited in what they can study. There are separate taxis for ladies and gents and separate rooms when they have wedding parties. They sell very fresh vegetables on the market, but the meat, although fresh, is usually covered in flies!

According to Patricia the people love to meet in the parks on Sundays to read poetry.

It was a very pleasant afternoon, we finished off with tea and cakes followed by Grace.

-- Audrey Reynolds

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