The August meeting of the Pagosa Springs Photography Club will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at the Community United Methodist Church, 434 Lewis St.
We will begin with social time at 6 p.m., and the meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. Please enter the church through the side door next to the parking lot.
This month’s presentation will feature Dave Anderson speaking about “Artificial Intelligence in Photography.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now in common use in digital photography. One example of AI use is adding functionality to digital cameras, including face, eye and other subject recognition and tracking; scene recognition; and intelligent automatic cameras.
AI is also used for post-processing images, including reducing noise, sharpening, digital enlargement and removing minor imperfections. Generative AI is being combined with digital photographic images to add, delete, replace or modify objects, to expand overly-cropped images, turn single images into panoramas, change the image background, or to change the style of a photographer’s images, blurring the line between photography and digital art.
Anderson’s presentation will discuss the main AI approach to image analysis and classification, convolutional neural networks.
He will also cover use of two generative AI approaches to image modification, generative adversarial networks and diffusion models, as well as AI-based defensive measures to combat uninvited image web-scraping for training sets. A number of examples will be used to illustrate these approaches.
Anderson has a wide range of experience in photography, from film to digital imaging, and uses both medium format and standard dSLRs. He has been a member of the Pagosa Springs Photography Club for several years.
The presentation will be followed by our monthly image share, for which Photography Club members may bring up to five images each to share and discuss.
This meeting will also be available on Zoom. The Zoom link will be emailed to members; others who wish to attend may request the link by email to abutler@mac.com.
August events
On Friday, Aug. 16, Photography Club members will travel to the ghost town of Summitville, high in the San Juan Mountains, for a photo outing.
We will leave Pagosa Springs at 8 a.m. The drive is about 1 hour and 45 min.
Summitville was a gold mining town beginning in the 1870s, and was occupied during several boom and bust cycles. Most of the remaining structures were likely built during the 1930s, but a few could be older. The site is about 11,400 feet high, above tree line. In addition to the old mining town, there are some great mountain views and alpine flowers in the area.
Summer brings numerous photographic opportunities in our local mountains. There are still many summer wildflowers blooming in the area. Expect a transition to late-summer species, such as gentians, during August. Potential afternoon monsoon showers may provide excellent landscape photography opportunities this time of year. If you want to make a positive out of a negative, look for periods when wildfire smoke from fires throughout the west drift over us to provide colorful sunsets or sunrises.
August is also a good time for night sky photography. The Milky Way is visible earlier at night than earlier in the year, and will be near vertical. Find a dark, clear night and a good foreground subject, and you can make excellent images of our home galaxy.
Good nights to see the Milky Way without too much interference from the moon are from the beginning of August until Aug. 14 and again from Aug. 24 through the end of the month.
Night sky enthusiasts may also photograph the Perseid meteor shower this month. The Perseids will be active from the beginning of August through Aug. 24, but peak on Aug. 12-13. The moon will set about midnight on the night of Aug. 12-13, so the early hours that morning could be ideal for observing and photographing the Perseids.
About the club
The Pagosa Springs Photography Club welcomes everyone who enjoys making and viewing great photography. The club sponsors educational programs, image sharing and discussion, and outings to help our members improve their photography.
For more information about the club, and to download a membership application, visit our website at https://pagosaspringsphotoclub.org/about/.
