Hi Everyone, 

As we approach the busy holiday season, SRPS is approaching a fun time of year.  This Thursday, November 14^th we have our field trip competition where the members get to choose the winners.  It is an entertaining evening and I hope most of will be able to attend. 

On November 25^th, the Monday before Thanksgiving, we will preview the images from the End of Year competition.  You should have received an email from Jack Florence telling you about this and letting you know about the judges for this competition.  The winners will be announced at the annual Banquet.  Also, at this meeting we will be holding a used equipment sale.  If you have any equipment you are willing to donate, all the proceeds from the sale will go to our renovation fund to help fix up our meeting place.  So, please dig though the gear you don’t use any longer and bring it to the meeting on the 25^th.  You get to save some space in your home or studio and the club gets the benefit.  A win-win for sure.   I will be bringing quite a few black frames with white mats for your images.  You won’t see these types of frames and mats at such bargain prices.

December 12^th is our annual Banquet.  The festivities are being put together by Elizabeth Springs and will be catered by King Falafel of Sebastopol.  Don’t forget we each get to bring either and appetizer or dessert.  You can even bring your own beverage to whet your whistle while the End of Year winners are announced.  The price of this amazing event is $25.00, and we suggest you pay by check.   We will of course take cash.  

Also, if your membership begins in January please consider paying your renewal by check, it is easier for Cheryl to keep track of who paid.    You can bring this along with your dinner admission and take care of it all at once.  Of course you can also pay your dues on the website by going to www.santarosaphotographicsociety.org  and clicking on the Members tab. 

At our Board meeting on Saturday we discussed a number of issues.  The professional photographer’s membership, and advancement to master candidate being the priority.  The vote outcome was 25 YES votes and 12 NO votes.  The changes to the competition rules will be made and distributed to the members as soon as they are complete.  The wording in the beginning of our bylaws will also be changed to reflect the vote outcome.  Once the latest scores are tabulated those eligible to move to master candidate will be notified.  

The Board also discussed items to be explored in the new year.  One that garnered a lot of support was targeting certain skills on field trips for the upcoming year.  Topics suggested were macro photography, portrait photography (want to be a model?), slow shutter speed, panoramas and night photography.  If you have any other ideas for this sort of field trip please let Trisha know. 

The Board also sought to institute a mentoring program, something that has been talked about for quite sometime.  Tony Reynes has accepted the position of Club Mentoring Chair.  He has been a judge and has critiqued for a number of years at his last club in Chicago.  His first program will be to set up a monthly remote image critique for dues paying club members.  If you are interested you can contact him at  tonyreynes@gmail.com.  Submit an image for review along with your phone number and a time slot you would like to be contacted.  He will accept or offer and alternative open time slot.  He will then call you at an agreed upon time and date and give you up to ten minutes to discuss your image.  The first window for this program will be on December 15th between 5PM and 6PM.   As you know, at our competition nights the critiques are not personal and the maker doesn’t always receive the type of feedback they would like nor do they have an opportunity to actually discuss the image.  If this works out hopefully some of our Master photographers will join in to enable much wider feedback and a greater opportunity for learning.  

Lastly the idea of making Master in individual categories such as Journalism, Wildlife, Pictorial etc. was discussed.   Don’t worry if you are a Master now you will be a Master later if this idea ultimately comes to fruition.   At this point this is just an idea and will be looked at next year. 

See you soon,

Mike

Happy Thanksgiving