Sale Photographic Society
Syllabus2007-onwards and upwards !Last Tuesday night, Richard Parish and I met up to discuss our thoughts for the Syllabus for 2007 and we also discussed several ideas that had been mooted by various members on how members may want the society to be steered to ensure survival and growth.
I hope we can discuss them at the next committee meeting and at the egm type meeting prior to Richard & I setting the 2007 syllabus as some of the topics require effort & thought to organise.
I'm sorry that I tend to miss out on meeting in the Eskdale Pub after the meetings but work beckons early the next day and unfortunately do not have as much free time as some.
The pub does seem to be the place where good discussions can take place due to the short length of time for coffee/tea break.Richard was saying that last week there was indeed some good discussion in the pub, where John E thought that people might want more "how to take photographs" evenings, going out for practical sessions, or "how to get the best out of your (digital) camera". This is in line with our thinking too.Dave H also suggested that the last Digital evening of the year (Nov 2) could contain Members' PicturesToExe presentations, about 5 minutes per person, perhaps with discussion and even voting for best.
We realise that there are about 13 to 15 weekly slots to fill for the year that are not already taken by competitions etc.We discussed that there does need to be more discussions on how to take good photos (what light, what lenses, good hints and tips) and just what is it and what does the photographer do that makes one photo stand out from others.
We have absolutely no intention of alienating anyone but the question has to be / is being asked as to what percentage of the members are using what methods (35mm prints, 35mm slides, digital prints and now is there room in the merits / quarterlies for digital slides using programs such as picstoexe).
For example as a relative novice, I'm not very good with traditional slide film but with a bit of help from rawshooter/photoshop/picstoexe I can produce reasonable digital slides. The competition would be fair as most people will have / can have that software to make an even playing field.
Can we make more use of the laptop & digital projector? Could we do digital slides for merits? Does this need an EGM?
Four more evenings could be catered for as part of the 2007 syllabus by the the week after the quarterly comps, the winners saying what they did to achieve their winning shots.
There could be practical session evenings both inside and outside:
Inside: Lets see each others equipment, cameras, lightmeters lenses gadgets aetc nd help each other on how we faired with the kit and to use the kit to its best ability. Review and swap magazines as a library (For example I subscribe to Photograpghy monthly because I feel practical photography is biased).
There may be members who are just about to buy new equipment and need practical help to see how members fair with their equipment.
Inside: For example I have now made a brief study on digital printing and could spend 10-15 mins or so on my experiences of the various shops used (bonusprint/truprint/klick/jessopps) etc wrt costings/quality of print and service.
Inside: Macro work etc - Lets use our lights not just for portratis but see practically how the experts take photos and make use of the lighting. Just how did DaveH do his 3 roses for example?????
Outside - lets make use of the spring/summer/autumn evenings - There should be about 6-8 weeks where it stays light for us all to have some favourite places to visit in Greater Manchester / Cheshire area. Then either come back to the church for tea/coffee or some convenient meeting house/inn or use the Eskdale pub - Using the pub also saves on rental fees as long as the church does not mind too much.
Where do other photo societies visit in the area ?- I bet they have published callendar of events for ideas.
Of course there are always our favourite guest speakers who are most entertaining and informative (This is where I found out that other societies use the summertime light)
Richard & I also discussed the great benefits of the issue raised by Bill - Team merits competitions.
As stated on this blogsite, whether these take over from individual comps or run along side (eg 2 of each comp) needs to be discussed.
We reckoned that this idea needs to be moulded into a practical working solution and may take up to the order of say 3 months to finalise but here are some more ideas:Teams to be set up so that photos were discussed within a group prior to presentationX number of photos by teams could all be displayed on the boards and viewed by all members rather than being discussed slowly on a 1 by 1 basis which may be boring members and keeping them away.
Winning photos can be marked for not only individual recognition but also team recognition (Team A,B,C etc).
In order to balance out winning potential, committe members may need to be team captains ( Eg: JohnE/DaveH/KenM/CyN) etc
Could there sometimes be a longer tea/coffee break for members to discuss their views rather than the rush that it sometimes seems to be. This could be accommodated in the digital evenings where those evenings can be split into general or digital discussions or team prep for comps etc.
Anyway, enough of this long blog. Some food for thought & even more discussion.
Best regards
David
posted by davekrammy @ 11:52 PM
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