January Update:

Hi Everyone,

Our next competition is Thursday evening, I hope to see you there.  We are also having a dinner at the East West Café with our judge prior to the competition.  If you would like to attend, please contact Bill Stacy as soon as possible, so he can notify the restaurant to expect you.  

You should have received a list of potential field trips from Trisha, Joel and Elizabeth.  Please make sure to bring the completed form to the meeting or send it via email so they have your feedback.  Don’t be shy about leading a field trip, it is easy and doesn’t take much time.  I have volunteered to lead the field trip to Preston Castle.  I hadn’t heard of Preston Castle, knew nothing about it, but after doing some quick research I thought it would be a fun trip to go on, and hopefully get some interesting photographs.  As I get more information, I will pass it on.  

For those of you who are new to our club, a significant part of your dues go to the Luther Burbank Art and Garden Center.  We pay $30.00 for each regular and associate member and this gives us the use of the facility for 13 meetings.  If we use the facility for additional meetings, such as a board meeting, we pay an additional $40.00 for its use.    If you have any questions about your dues please contact Cheryl Akers, our very capable treasurer.  

Steve Ruddy one of our new members, has volunteered to resurrect our SRPS forum.  The forum was used quite a bit by members in the past however in the recent years it has been underutilized.  Many of you may not even know we have a forum for your participation.  Steve is going to bring this forum back and try to update it to the needs of our current membership.  He is currently working on a test forum and when that is ready to go, he will let me know.  I would encourage you to visit the current forum, take a look around and send Steve any thoughts you have on how we can best utilize it.  This is not only for image critique but for questions about software and its utilization if you have questions on how to do something in a particular software such as Photoshop, Luminar, the Nik collection etc.  Steve looks at this as something that will evolve over time as members take advantage of it.  Please take the time to visit the forum.  You will have to create an account first.  Don’t worry it is easy and painless.  Take a look around and send Steve your thoughts on ideas as to what you would like to see included as part of the forum.  The forum address is srps.proboards.com.  Please send comments to Steve at steve@steveruddyphotography.com.  

I want to apologize to Tony Reynes for omitting him in my last update, and letting you know he was the first-place winner in the master’s Pictorial category.  Tony also does person to person critiques on your images. He told me he did five in the last session and he had not yet received any letter bombs.  It sounds as if that is going well.  If you would like Tony to do an individual critique, please sign up for one of his available slots. 

If you haven’t already reserved your space, please consider attending the N4C Annual Awards Luncheon in Walnut Creek.  It is a lot of fun and you will see some amazing print photos on display.  It is February 23^rd.  

Bill Stacy and Liz Lawson are working on having a presentation to the club on Portfolios.  The presentation will include the rules, and topics such as the over-all purpose of this new competition, and why you might want to participate in the portfolio competition.  Examples of portfolios will be shown and critiqued. We will keep you posted on this important program as details become available.  

Lastly, here are some fascinating facts, believe them or not:

1.  The word KODAK is totally made up.  Unlike Canon, which means a rule or law, KODAK means absolutely nothing.  George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, just like the sound of the letter “K” so he created a whole world about it.  

2.  During the 1800s, one of the most popular subjects for photography were dead bodies (“postmortem photography”) While it was primarily famous people who were photographed, many regular people were also photographed after their deaths.  

3. The equivalent f-stop values for the human eye are f8.3 in bright environments and f2 in the dark.  

See you soon,

Mike