This month we welcomed Ben Hosking to our gathering to talk to us about his experience as a photographer of automobiles and music gigs. Ben spoke about how he became interested in photography and who his idols, who influenced his move into the field of Automatic Photography, were. When he showed examples of some of his work we were left wondering how it was possible to take such photos, until he revealed that he used three different exposures of the same image and layered them together in Photoshop to get the final result. Ben also explained that he is moving away from using flashes to illuminate his subjects and employing light painting techniques instead. It was interesting to see the different images he could get using these techniques, again with at least four images layered together to get his completed photo.

Any members who were looking for pointers to make a career as a music photographer would have been disappointed by Ben's advice on that score – he said there was absolutely no money in it and that you have to do it for love only.  The first step is to get yourself a magazine publisher who can get you into the gigs. Once in you basically get only the first three songs to take photos, and only one of those songs from inside the mosh pit if there are lots of photographers there. So you basically have to ramp up your ISO, shoot wide open and get your images quickly.

We were pleased to welcome Rhiannon, Bruce and David as our guests for the evening.