Minutes for June Zoom meeting

[anna mccolm]

23 people participated in the June meeting.

The club has 2 new members: Anette Schrage and Linda Heimlich.

Anette is known to club members already because she recently gave a presentation of her work. Her subject is mixed media fine art and she has shown work at the Photosynthesis shows at Artspring.

Linda has recently moved to the Island from Calgary and is interested in landscape and wildlife photography. She has a Nikon SLR.

Pierre has a show in the activity Library room, documenting his journey from wet chemistry in the 70's to digital photography. There are a lot of images and writing to see and digest so give yourself lots of time to view his show. It's up until June 28th.

Gwen will be showing some images at Country Grocer in July.

Judy's suggestion that the education portion of the next meeting (July) be taken up with Eclectic Vision participants explaining the story behind the images they chose was approved. Get ready to present your work verbally!

Next month's challenge is 'your vision'. This was inspired by the talk we heard from Cole Thompson. Doug has explained the concept well and I will try and add a bit more from the notes I took.

Cole Thompson introduced himself; He's an American living in the States although he has spent time in Nanaimo and has a fondness for the West Coast's beauty and culture. He looks forward to coming here one day. He describes himself as 'unqualified' as he has no degree in the arts and has never taken a workshop or a course in photography. He has 3 lenses and no Primes.

He has worked for years with B&W and admires Ansel Adams. He finds that B&W often records the feelings beneath the surface.

He encouraged us all to work with and be guided by our unique vision. Our visions have developed from our unique life experiences and are not something that can be learned. We each one of us see the world in a different way and can tap into this at any time.

He shared some things he has learned along the way:

He only keeps images he really, really loves.

He has learned to exercise photographic celibacy and doesn't look at other people's photography. This helps to eliminate comparison and self doubt.

He tries not to care what other people think about his work. If he likes it then that's good enough for him.

Forget the rules. (The rules of thirds etc.) There are no rules.

Don't take advice from other people. Trust in yourself.

Is your work artistic? Is it good art? Is it fine art? Who cares! If you like it then print it and stick it on your wall!

Two quotes from Cole:

"As a photographer my goal was to document what my eye saw. As an artist my goal is to show you what I see through my vision."

"Vision is the difference between an average image and a great image."

Since the last meeting there has been some discussion among the Executive members whether to start in-person monthly meetings or whether to stay on Zoom. The conclusion was that we would stay with the Zoom format until people are fully vaccinated so we are more protected from the Delta variant. The executive will re-assess the situation in the Fall.

 

[Avril Kirby]

Good, fulsome minutes, Anna! Thank you

[Pierre Mineau]

Excellent.

Thank you Anna. An unsung but important job.