Start Date | 11 September, 2022 |
End Date | 14 September, 2022 |
Cut off date | 1 September, 2022 |
Individual Price | $50 Members - $70 Non Members |
Location | Toowoomba QLD |
As Queensland’s largest inland City, Toowoomba retains country charm with a growing urban coffee culture and street art scene.
Also known as the Garden City, Toowoomba is home to hundreds of parks and gardens as well as the iconic Carnival of Flowers spring event. No matter when you visit, you’ll discover rolling plains, vibrant country towns, bright sunflower farms and quaint hamlets. Head to the Garden City during the month of September and join the festivities as the city blooms to life to celebrate the beginning of Spring with the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers.
Just 90 minutes drive west from Brisbane, sitting 700 metres above sea level make your way up the Great Dividing Range. You’ll find a town with a big city feeling but a small-town heart. Welcome to Queensland’s largest inland city.
Discover why they call Toowoomba the Garden City with a visit to Australia’s second most populous inland city. Getting there is easy, whether you come by road, rail or air – look for the Great Dividing Range.
Once you arrive, you’ll soon see how the town earnt its moniker, with 150 plus parks and gardens around its city-surrounds. Time your visit for spring to soak up the atmosphere of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers, a ten day festival of food and florals that takes over the region.
Regardless of what season you visit, you’ll find a bustling CBD filled with a cafe and street art scene and see why Toowoomba is one of Australia’s fastest growing cities.
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NOTE: The current health mandate in QLD is that you must be doubled vaccinated to enter the venues in our program. This will more than likely change by September however we ask that you exercise your own judgement. More updates will be placed here as mandates and health regulations change. |
MEMBER PRICE DISCOUNT: You must be logged in to received the member price of $50. Non members - $70 |
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Interactive Map of Meet-Up Locations
6.00pm - 7.30pm | Meet and Greet | Burke and Wills Hotel - Zacks Foyer with grazing platters. Purchase own drinks. ($10 extra if partner attends) |
Incl $10 |
7.00am - 9.00am | Tour of Empire State Theatre Including Morning Tea |
Meet in Empire Theatre Foyer, 56 Neil St, Toowoomba | Incl |
9.00am - 10.30am | Lane Way walk including Street Art | Depart from Empire Theatre, 56 Neil St, Toowoomba | Incl |
Break and Travel Time | |||
11.30am - 1.30pm | Dog Portraiture Workshop with Tina Dial | Laurel Bank Park, 50 Hill St, Toowoomba TBC | $10 |
Break and Travel Time | |||
3.30pm - 9.30pm | Photography of old barn, historic garage and motor museum with retro cafe. Dinner included. | The Barn and Scotty's Garage - 1709 Flagstone Creek Road Upper Flagstone | $50 |
7.00am - 8.30am | Flower walk in Queens Park | Queens Park, end of Godsall Street, Toowoomba | Incl |
9.00am - 12.00pm | Photography EXPO and Studio sessions | Camera House, 169 James St, Toowoomba City | Incl |
Lunch Break (own arrangements) | |||
12.45pm - 1.15pm | Chat Time | Lennon's Room Burke and Wills Hotel - 554 Ruthven St Toowoomba City | |
1.15pm - 2.15pm | Lensbaby presentation with Wendy Roche | Lennon's Room Burke and Wills Hotel - 554 Ruthven St Toowoomba City | $10 |
2.15pm - 3.15pm | Imaging the cosmos from your backyard with Dan Fitch | Lennon's Room Burke and Wills Hotel - 554 Ruthven St Toowoomba City | $10 |
3.13pm - 3.45pm | Afternoon Tea | Lennon's Room Burke and Wills Hotel - 554 Ruthven St Toowoomba City | Incl |
3.45pm - 4.45pm | Photo Stacking presentation with Brian Russell | Lennon's Room Burke and Wills Hotel - 554 Ruthven St Toowoomba City | $10 |
Dinner Break (own arrangements) | |||
7.00pm | Night Shoot with Dan Fitch | Spring Bluff, McCormack Drive, Toowoomba Area TBC | n/a |
7.00am - 8.00am | Lensbaby workshop with Wendy Roche - Session 1 | Laurel Bank Park - 50 Hill St Toowoomba | n/a |
7.00am - 8.00am | Macro/Stacking Workshop with Brian Russell - Session 1 | Laurel Bank Park - 50 Hill St Toowoomba | n/a |
8.00am - 9.00am | Lensbaby workshop with Wendy Roche - Session 2 | Laurel Bank Park - 50 Hill St Toowoomba | n/a |
8.00am - 9.00am | Macro/Stacking Workshop with Brian Russell - Session 2 | Laurel Bank Park - 50 Hill St Toowoomba | n/a |
Break and Travel Time | |||
11.00am - 4.00pm | Highfields Pioneer Village including lunch, tea and damper | Highfields Pioneer Village - 73 Wirraglen Rd Highfields | $48 |
Break and Travel Time | |||
6.30pm - Late | Farewell Dinner with Surprise Guest | Rudd's Pub - 45 Tooth St Nobby | $42 |
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The APS National Meet up has been planned by the APS Events Team to bring together APS members and friends for three days of photography, camaraderie and above all fun. The information below has been provided to help you enjoy the event.
All activities are self-drive, and you will be met by APS Events Team members on arrival at each activity. Events Team members will be identifiable by the APS t-shirts that they will be wearing.
Accommodation books out quickly in Toowoomba in September so be sure to book early. There is accommodation ranging from camping right through to 5 Star Hotels so there’s something for everyone.
The temperature in Toowoomba in September ranges from the high 20oCs down to 1oC at night so some warm clothing will be needed.
This will be a time when APS members and friends reunite, and the excitement begins to build. There will be some finger food available and the tables that have been booked are close to the bar for those who wish to purchase drinks. Members of the Events Team will be on hand to answer queries and will hand out small bags containing relevant information and a name badge to wear during next few days. Street parking will be readily available in the area around the hotel.
This will be a unique guided tour of the historic Empire Theatre which has stood in Neil Street Toowoomba since 1911 playing an integral part in the cultural development of the region. The heritage listed theatre is a building with rich history and wonderful architecture, including the grand proscenium arch, decorative sconces, original brick walls in the foyers and art-deco style lighting. Photography is welcome throughout the tour and a light morning tea will be provided. You’ll need a wide-angle lens and perhaps a close-up lens for detailed shots. Tripods are acceptable in this venue. The closest parking is available in the Neil Street car park. About Us » Empire Theatre. Events Team members will meet you in the Foyer of the Empire Theatre.
Events Team members will meet you in the Foyer of the Empire Theatre at the conclusion of the Empire Theatre Tour and the walk will meander through Toowoomba’s lanes and parks which are full of fabulous street art. There will be plenty of time for photography and the walk will conclude at the Ground Up Cafe which is an easy walk back to the Neil Street Car Park. You’ll need a walk around lens/wide angle lens and perhaps a tripod for when we go into the Empire Theatre. Walking shoes are recommended.
This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn the finer details and gather tips for capturing dogs in ambient lighting in Laurel Banks Park which will be full of spring flowers. The workshop will be run by expert dog photographer Tina Dial who owns and runs Pawsnap Pet Photography www.pawsnap.com.au. The dogs will be local competitive dogs and be accompanied by their owners. You will need a walk around lens, portrait lens and perhaps a zoom. Walking shoes are recommended. Parking will be readily available on the street.
The visit to The Barn and Scotty's Garage will be a delight for photographers with hundreds of historic items outdoors and indoors to train your lens on. There will be an opportunity to photograph garage memorabilia, historic cars and a fabulous retro cafe. A two-course dinner which will be served in the Barn is included in this tour will be followed by an opportunity to photograph the garage including two historic petrol pumps in night lighting. Dinner will be alternate drop of grilled steak or grilled chicken with seasonal vegetables. You’ll need a wide-angle lens/walk around lens, close up lens and a tripod. Bring light sources if you wish. (thebarnandscottysgarage.com.au). Events Team members will meet you in the car park.
This will be a time to appreciate the flowers that make Toowoomba’s Carnival of Flowers famous before the crowds arrive and the flowers are fresh. It will be a casual meander through the flower beds and there’ll be plenty of opportunities for photography. You’ll need a walk around lens and a close up or even a macro lens to capture the exquisite detail in the poppies, tulips, roses and many more floral beauties. Walking shoes are recommended. Best parking for this walk is at the end of Godsall Street and members of the Events Team will meet you there.
This will be a feast of photographic equipment on display and plenty of opportunities to talk with representatives from the camera companies. The EXPO is being hosted by Camera House and there will be studio sessions run by experts so that participants can photograph models in stunning settings and receive large prints of their images. There will also be opportunities to borrow equipment including the Lensbaby range to try out at the workshops on the following morning. There will be parking at Camera House and members of the Events Team will meet you there.
There will three presentations during the afternoon with an afternoon tea break. These presentations are all linked to a hands-on session.
The first presentation will be about Lensbaby photography with Wendy Roche, and she will run two hands on sessions on the following morning in Laurel Bank Park.
"The session will start with a brief chat about me and how I became a Lensbaby addict. This will be followed up by a 35-minute PowerPoint presentation on Lensbaby. It will include an overview of the Lensbabies that are available now and creative ways to use them. Throughout the presentation I will use my own images to show the different effects that can be achieved with the Lensbabies which I own. This will include the Muse (Spark) with its individual macro rings and creative aperture rings. The Composer Pro and the Optic Swap System, the Velvet 56, the Sol 45, the Omni Flare system, the Edge 80/35, the Burnside 35. After the PowerPoint there will be 10 minutes for questions. The remaining time will be spent getting to know how to attach the lenses, feeling how different they are to use and generally just familiarising the attendees with the product. I will bring some fresh flowers which they could play around with briefly in preparation for workshops the next morning."
This will be followed by a presentation by Dan Fitch from the Toowoomba Astronomy Club, and he will take us on an enthusiastic journey into the cosmos. Dan will give a brief overview of the equipment, imaging techniques and post processing that goes into making a typical Astrophoto, and how you can do it from anywhere, with almost anything. Dan will demonstrate how wonderful Astrological images can be achieved with a DLSR camera. He will run a night photography session at Spring Buff at 7 pm the same evening.
The final presentation will be on Macro Photography and Photo Stacking with Brian Russell who is the Chairperson of Nature Group and will run two hands on sessions the following morning in Laurel Bank Park.
“Macro photography lends itself to the technique of image stacking so as to achieve a greater depth of field than could ever be achieved with a single image. Having commenced macro photography on subjects such as fungi with a single image on film, the final crop had to be achieved in camera. Move forward to 2022 and I am in awe of the technology we have at our disposal today in our digital cameras to manage long exposures, more often negating the need for flash. My presentation will attempt to cover basic macro methods – lenses, lighting, equipment and technique. It will culminate in the technique of image stacking and how to achieve that with most digital cameras”.
The closest parking for the afternoon sessions will be the car park in Annand Street directly behind the Hotel ($1.90 per hour).
The day trip to Highfields Pioneers Village will stimulate your imagination with a wide variety of photographic opportunities from gorgeous well-preserved relics from the past, stunning portraiture opportunities with local models inside the authentic historic buildings including a Chapel, Silversmith, Butcher shop, bakery, blacksmith, schoolhouse and many more, to the local cheeky lorikeets. When you arrive, you’ll step onto a Model -T Ford bus for an orientation tour of the 20-acre village and then the day will unfold including a delicious lunch (assorted sandwiches followed by desert) and a tea and damper afternoon tea. You will need a walk around lens, portrait lens and perhaps a close up. Walking shoes are recommended. Highfields Pioneer Village. Events Team members will meet you at the car park.
The final activity of the Meet up will be a wonderful home cooked meal at the historic Rudd's Pub, the home of Dad and Dave. The rustic pub gives you the opportunity to Immerse yourself in a wonderful photographic collection and a wonderful collection of memorabilia adorns the walls (and the ceiling). There will be some surprise entertainment during the evening as the group enjoys dinner in a private room away from the main bar area. This will be a casual fun filled evening. The venue is a 30-minute drive from Toowoomba and parking is available on the street. Photography is permissible. There is some accommodation available at the pub should you choose to stay the night in Nobby. www.ruddspub.com.au.
Bio
At almost 96 years of age, Graham is a living legend in the photography world with two books under his belt and another in the pipeline. His photographs are held in many institutions around Australia, including the National Library in Canberra.
His illustrious career includes being a founding member of the Australian Photographic Society in 1962. Since that time, he has contributed enormously to the Society and its members, has been involved in the organisation of national and international exhibitions and has been represented in many solo and group exhibitions. He is a past president and was the APS Print Division chairman for ten years.
He began photographing at the age of seventeen, having been introduced to it by his younger brother, Sydney, who had joined Toowoomba Grammar School’s camera club. Thus began a lifelong passion for the artform and a commitment to its promotion through the photographic movement – the latter seeing him recognised by an Order of Australia medal in 2004 for his services to Photography. The first Queenslander to do so, he has achieved a Fellowship in each of the Australian, British and American Photographic Societies. After 60 years membership, he is patron and life member of the Toowoomba Photographic Society.
As one would expect, he continues to photograph using film and creates prints using gelatin silver.
Contact Details
www.grahamburstow.com.au
Bio
Martyn Jolly is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University School of Art and Design. He is an artist and a writer.
As an artist he has participated in several major curated exhibitions and developed solo exhibitions which creatively re-use archival photographs. Works from Wonderful Pictures and 1963: News and Information are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Canberra Museum and Gallery. In 2006 he was one of three artists commissioned to design and build the Act Bushfire Memorial. He completed his PhD on fake photographs and photographic affect at the University of Sydney in 2003.
In 2006 his book Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography was published by the British Library, as well as in the US and Australia. In 2011 he undertook a Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia and a Collection Scholar Artist in residence Fellowship at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. In 2014 he received an Australian Research Council Discovery grant along with Dr Daniel Palmer to research the impact of new technology on the curating of Australian art photography. In 2015 he received an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant to lead the international project Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World.
Since 2015 he has developed a series of collaborative magic lantern performances around Australia, available on the Heritage in the Limelight website. In 2020, with Elisa deCourcy he co-edited The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, and co-authored Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: the Global Career of Showman Daguerreotypist J. W. Newland, both published by Routledge. His book, co-authored with Daniel Palmer, Installation View: Australian Photography Exhibitions 1848-2020, was published by Perimeter Editions in 2021. He is also researching Australian illustrated magazines, Australiana photobooks, colonial spectacle and modernity, colonial photography, the history of Australian media art, and early Australian visual education.
Contact Details
www.martynjolly.com/
Social Media
facebook.com/martyn.jolly.39
twitter.com/martyn_jolly?lang=en
@martyn_jolly
Bio
Libby co-founded Australia’s first print-on-demand photo book company, Momento, in 2004. Since then she has helped establish the Australia & New Zealand Photobook Awards and the APS Photobook Competition, as well as the first photo book festivals in the region - Photobook Melbourne and Photobook New Zealand. She regularly curates content and hosts events to enable photographers to design and self-publish successful books, and passionately promotes antipodean photo books to the local and international community.
Contact Details
www.momentopro.com.au
Bio
No journalist bridged the worlds of journalism and entertainment more successfully than Ray Martin. He was a New York correspondent for the ABC, a star reporter in the heyday of Channel 9’s Sixty Minutes, hosted the television variety show Midday for eight years, presented the nightly news programme A Current Affair and hosted federal election debates and counts. He broke big stories and along the way collected five Gold Logies for the most popular personality on television and is a member of the Australian Media Hall of Fame.
His philanthropy is evident in his support for the Fred Hollows Foundation and his work in this and other areas is to be applauded.
Less well known is the fact that he is a passionate photographer with a special interest in outback landscape. Not one to take himself too seriously, he describes himself as a mad photographer, Rabbitohs fan and occasional journo.
Ray Martin's Photography Journey
Veteran journalist & award-winning TV personality Ray Martin has been, what he calls, “ a closet photographer” for over half a century.
Paid to TELL the story - not take the pictures - Ray was always being told to “ put the damn camera down” by producers & tv cameramen at Four Corners & 60 Minutes.
Thankfully, he didn’t. To prove it, there’s a catalogue of photographs, a number of exhibitions & a book with his pictures, published by Melbourne University Press
a few years ago, called "Ray Martin’s World". Martin says he’s like 'The Man from American Express' - he never leaves home without his camera! Photos from commercial planes at 37,000 feet have become a specialty. He’s got a million stories to tell of exotic places he’s been, and strange people he’s met; including some truly great photographers.
What’s Ray Martin going to reveal ? Well, as they say in the news business …"Watch This Space".
Social Media
twitter.com/raymartin
Bio
John has been a member of APS for more than 40 years. He is a former President and was a member of the executive for 10 years. He is currently Chair of the APS AV Group. Over his years of membership he has been awarded many photographic honours in still images, AV and for service to both APS and FIAP. He has also judged and made photographic presentations in all Australian states and Territories as well as in New Zealand, England, China and South Africa.
In 2006 John was appointed Patron of the South Australian Photographic Federation and continues to serve in that position. He regularly runs courses in landscape photography and audio visual making for members of clubs affiliated with the Federation and continues to be active as a judge and presenter. His principal photographic interests are audio visuals, landscape, architecture and wildlife.
Contact
Email John Hodgson
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