We had another well-attended zoom meeting on Tuesday, over 40 members in attendance, and a record-breaking number of Share and Learn submissions! Wow, the club is showing that even with social distancing we can keep our social group active and growing. Thank you all for joining us and participating. And a big thanks to Chuck for his ever-impressive web skills, keeping our club virtually together.
Membership chair Pam Walton started the meeting by reporting that we had 5 new members join this month. We are now up to 80 members! Last year we started our Paypal online membership payments and with these virtual meetings, this has been a great benefit to keep our membership growing even without the person to person meetings.
Besides Membership, we heard a report from Activities Chair Anne Mullins. She is mindful of the current health concerns with traveling and social distancing so there are no formal activities planned for the near future. However, there could be some pop-up activities that will be posted on our web site or on our Facebook page. Some suggestions for a pop-up activity is a downtown architectural trip, local photo shot of Kingwood churches and within a 100-mile radius of Kingwood are many towns and sights that could be a quick day trip. Jim Schepens also mentioned a potential trip for next year to the Black Hills. Steve Hansen is currently in South Dakota and he was going to talk with Jim about ideas for that trip.
Chuck Dugand has been super busy during this pandemic. He has started a Wednesday Photographer Lunch with no agenda. Just meeting virtually with photography friends over lunch and talk about anything nonpolitical. This last Wednesday we talked about where our favorite places to go in our area for sunrise, sunset photos so he has created a google map under our resources. Look for his News article and Facebook article.
Another initiative of Chuck’s is a Mentoring Program. This is created to help our new and old members improve their skill in various areas of photography. We have had many members want to know how to operate their cameras or specific post processing issues so this is a start at bringing together a member with specific knowledge with a member that needs that knowledge. Checkout the Mentor’s Program tab on our website and let us know what you think of it.
Finally, Chuck also talked about the Post Processing SIG that has been ongoing. The lunch group discussed this and some suggestions were talked about to make it more interactive. Chuck does not want this to be a workshop so making it more hands-on is the goal. Look for more information from Chuck.
Jim Evrard talked briefly about the Portraiture SIG which has been badly hurt by this pandemic. Just because we cannot meet in person does not mean that each of us cannot practice portraits of family or friends. There are many good resources on the web and on our own resource page and we’ll continue to post articles on portraiture and lighting topics.
The August Workshop on “Re-envisioning your Image” is coming up. This is the final workshop of the series that Chuck presented (“Know your Camera” and “Creating Art”). He will focus on post-processing the image to tell the story we want to tell. Go to our website to signup for the August 1 virtual workshop. Now, putting out the hat for Chuck, he has done so many workshops and we are short a topic and leader for September and November. There are many topics that we have not heard from this year and he would greatly appreciate your help. Please consider contacting Chuck if you can help him out. Chris Summers is busy working on his October workshop “Children’s Portraiture” If you have seen any of his many posts on Facebook you know Chris has an excellent eye, that the portraiture of his grand kids are fun and expressive. Mark your calendars so you don’t miss this opportunity to hear how to take great family photos before the holidays.
Our July program “Architectural Photography” by Joe Aker owner of Aker Photography was filled with beautiful visions of buildings locally and all over the world. Look for a separate post on Joe’s talk and a link to the program that Chuck recorded. The talk was very well received and you’ll want to watch the recording if you missed it.
Finally, the next virtual meeting will be on August 18th. Jim Schepens has arranged for David Morefield, owner of Fluffyshotme Photography on “Using White Balance Effectively”. David is a local photographer that I actually met several years ago in Downtown Houston while doing some night shooting. Very personable and knowledgable. It should be an interesting talk.
Assignment for next month “Foreground, Mid-Ground, and Background”. Look for a separate post on the next month’s assignment.
It was so good to see so many of you even virtually. Please be well, stay cool and keep in touch with the club by watching for the Monday e-mail blast or follow us on Facebook. Check out a Wednesday Photographers Lunch for some laid back conversation and group chat.
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.