Minutes for October meeting

[anna mccolm]

Avril stood in for Pierre and opened the meeting. The group sat in an informal circle as the educational part of the meeting was given over to a discussion about the future direction of the Club.

Marcia Jeanne's friend Olivia (from France) was a guest at the meeting and she told me afterwards that listening to the discussion was good practice for her English comprehension.

Bernadette has two pieces showing at Artspring as part of the Painters Guild's Show.

Kahsia suggested meeting at a vineyard for this month's Photowalk. The vines are turning colour and there might be wine to sample! It has been set for Tuesday 16th at SS Vineyards and Wine, at the top of Lee's Hill. The tasting room is open until 4pm but they don't mind staying open later for photos. Pat will give us more details by email nearer the time. The nets may be coming down in the next few days but they can't guarantee they'll be down by Tuesday.

The discussion covered many topics and went on until 8.30 when we stopped in order to have time for the slideshow That was one of the topics - that we leave enough time for the slideshow so that it doesn't feel rushed.

- Emails regarding Club business are still not being received by everyone. Also - people are not getting alerted if there are comments about a photo they have posted or about a photo they themselves have commented on. Wendy will try again to contact Ning (it has been hard to find an actual person to talk to about these problems) and get some resolution. Since the meeting she has managed to make contact and things may be back on track soon. Yeah Wendy!

- Someone asked Derek to acknowledge getting the photos we send him for the slideshow. He will do that in the future.

. Wendy will post a link to Dropbox in the blogs so the slideshows can be viewed and they will be kept for 4 -6  months on the website.

- Derek will put the photographers name on the file (still talking slideshow here) as Doug used to do.

- The website is not being used as much as it used to be.

The Club was using 4 times more Gigabytes than we were allotted and Wendy had mentioned this to Ning as it was going to cost us a lot more. She wishes she hadn't said anything as it doesn't seem to be an issue with them and they haven't asked for more money. So - it's business as usual and we're all encouraged to post photos and comment on other peoples photos as often as we want.

Let the Website be the social, communication and learning experience we started with - a tool for us all to use and learn from. Feel free to post - what are you doing these days? What are you seeing? What new methods are you trying?

Some people feel uncomfortable critiquing other people's photos. Jana mentioned that Ramona Lam has taken a course that covered the rules of successful critiquing and will ask her if she'd be willing to share her knowledge with the Club.

Some members wanted to learn how to put a protective watermark on their images and learn more about how to use various photo programmes. Some workshops covering these topics could be organised.

The various groups (Black and White, Macro, Street photography, Nature etc.) have fizzled out recently and it was suggested that someone take on the task of getting these groups going again as there is interest among the members to learn from these groups. Any volunteers for facilitating this revival?

Judy mentioned a Photographer named David Duchemin who gives talks on the creative aspect of photography "Craft and Vision" and wondered if we could pay him to come and talk to us. Larry mentioned that he had a video of one of his talks and we decided to watch that instead and follow it with a discussion. Jana is going to look at her video collection too to see if she has something interesting for the group.

Last month's speaker, David Ellingson, was very good and he came over from Victoria to speak with us but very few people showed up. It was suggested that, in the future, we could advertise similar talks to the Island (via the Salt Spring Exchange) and charge a nominal $5 per non-member.

The screen/projector topic came up again. At the moment we're using a lap-top with a flat screen TV for showing photos. The images are quite small. The other option is to use a projector/ screen combination so we could view the images larger. The projector is not as good as we'd like and another, better one could be bought by the club for around $1000. Doug will bring his own higher quality projector to next month's meeting so we can see the difference and decide whether or not to spend money on purchasing one.

Pierre (via Avril) wanted to know how much involvement the Club wanted to commit to at next year's Photofest. It was generally felt that it would be better to get it established and get feedback first before jumping into too many organised events. We could work up to some of his ideas the following year.

Next month's photo challenge is - to challenge yourself! Do something different from your normal photographing habits and share it with the group.

If anyone is disinterested in the monthly challenge - no worries, just post something. You could address the time of year; right now it's pumpkins, Hallowe'en, Fall.

[timothy gibbon]

thank you, Anna. sorry I could not make the meeting to deliver and receive crucial idears. possibly someone could note that I have received zero notifications from the club. I would appreciate a refresher on how and when to submit to Derek for the slideshow. pumpkins aweigh!