My first meeting with some ‘togs from the DSLR User forums was one I organised to St Albans on the 2nd February. Having seen one or two other meetings taking place on that website I decided I was missing out due to always being working when they were organised. I realised that the only way to guarantee being able to go on one was to organise one for myself.

In the end four of us from the forum turned up, I met members Debbie, Daisy & Saladin, who traveled all the way from Wiltshire.

We spent the first hour or so around the park at Verulam shooting the ducks, geese, swans & herons. The weather was sunny & fresh. It was pretty cold and some of the ducks looked hilarious struggling across the ice of the smaller lake.

We then took a break at the nearby Waffle House for some well-earned refreshment before wandering back through the park & up to the Cathedral.

I’m currently into HDR shots at the moment so this was an ideal opportunity to try some shots for the HDR portfolio. I’d contacted the Cathedral during the week to make sure it was OK to use tripods inside, so I set the tripod up for the multiple-exposures required for HDR. Most of the shots were done in aperture priority & consisted of 5 separate shots ranging from minus 2 stops to plus 2 stops. (later combined using Photomatix software).

I mainly used the new Sigma 10-20mm lens which is rapidly becoming a favourite. The Sigma 18-50mm was stuck on my daughter’s Canon 300D & did get a few shots also.

There shooting was pretty uneventful although daisy & Saladin were "told off" by the organist for photographing the choirboys during their practice – apparently it’s not allowed.

We ended the evening with a nice meal at the Fighting Cocks public house which is just down the hill from the cathedral (I keep saying ‘cathedral‘ although technically it’s not a cathedral but an abbey).

The others then left while I walked back to the cathedral for some night shots. On the way back to the car park I got a phone call from Saladin whose battery had died, so I assisted with a jump-start before heading off home to process the shots.

A writeup of the photoshoot appeared in the News section of DSLR User Magazine’s April issue.