Hello Everyone,

“When your heart jumps every time your camera locks focus…you’ve become a photographer”

-Mark Denman

It is getting to be that time of year when we bring everything together as a result of all your hard work taking, processing and submitting images to our competitions.  We also have our elections at the first meeting in November.  According to our bylaws you will be given an opportunity to nominate someone for a position on the board.  In 2021 I won’t be able to fulfill the position of President, so one or more will need to be nominated for this position.  Additionally, Cris Gondak will not be able to serve in her capacity as Secretary.  We already have two nominations for these positions.  Joel Brown has accepted a nomination for President and Elizabeth Springs has accepted the nomination for Secretary.  If you have anyone else in mind, please be prepared to bring up their name at our next meeting before the vote.  The nominee must have consented to serve prior to the vote.     

Additionally, the board of directors met yesterday to discuss all the various competition awards, and the upcoming zoom exhibition.  There is an incredible amount of work that goes into ensuring all the proper awards get collated.  Bill Stacy has arranged to have four judges review the 454 images that are eligible for the end of year awards.  As you can imagine a daunting task.  Steve Muench has also been working diligently behind the scenes as the new Competition Chair. One of the problems he has found, which creates an enormous amount of work, are the various levels of competition, B, A, AA and M.  N4C doesn’t use these levels and it creates additional work to make sure your entry is submitted to N4C in the correct category, and mistakes can easily be made.  The board has proposed we align our competition levels with those of N4C. They use Basic, Intermediate, Advanced and Master.  As this is a rule change, we need you to ask you to approve the change.  

Please vote to approve or disapprove the change from:

B to Basic

A to Intermediate

AA to Advanced

M to Master

We also need to change the wording in our Competition Rules and Bylaws.  This is due to the timing we receive the winners from our last competition from N4C.  There is very little time to collate all the scores before the banquet and it will be easier if we have the ability to change the date of the Awards Banquet. This gives us much more flexibility.    

The change would be as follows:

Competition rules, change from Section 7.0 currently “at the annual awards banquet in December of each year.” to “at the annual awards banquet.”

Bylaws change article 7 section 7.3 from “in December on a date to be announced.” to “a date to be announced.” leaving out the month December. 

Reply to me with your vote YES or NO on each of the changes.

There is a great deal of information that will be coming your way very soon.  Please be on the lookout for updates on how to enter your image into the zoom exhibition with SmugMug.  At our next meeting, in addition to viewing the submissions to the Field Trip competition, we will also be including a preview of the 8 Portfolio entries that were submitted to the N4C Portfolio competition.  This is a new competition and I am really looking forward to seeing those entries.  I am told they are outstanding.  

That’s it for now, don’t forget to vote on the above changes.  When the minutes of our board meeting are completed, I will be forwarding them to you.  

Take care and be safe,

Mike