Hi Everyone,

Just a reminder we have a great field trip planned by Joel and Trisha to the Legion of Honor on March 30^th.  The group will meet up at 9:30 AM in the parking lot.  There should be no shortage of photographic opportunities for you.  I look forward to seeing the images you come back with.  Another field trip reminder is the Bodie trip in June, don’t forget to make lodging reservations soon, as the towns around there fill up quickly at that time of year.  

Dick Weston and Phil Hann have volunteered to put on 4-6 classes on working with Layers in Photoshop.  When I asked at the last meeting if anyone was interested in learning Layers, there was a very positive response.  I know I can certainly use any Photoshop learning opportunity.  The lessons will most likely be held prior to our regular meetings, and more information on that will be forthcoming as Dick and Phil finalize their presentation.  We are looking to start this in May.  Dick and Phil have done these in the past and have been very well received.  

Our last competition with the Silverman’s as our judges was a great deal of fun. If you attended, you may have very well walked away with one of the many raffle prizes they brought for our members. As usual, the suggestions given on our images were spot on, and occasionally a comment brought a good laugh. I always look forward to their commentary.  I was fortunate to have won the Best in Show competition at the end of the evening with my Fisherman at Sunrise image.  Thank you very much Susan and Neil.  In addition to the raffle prizes they gave out, they also donated a Datacolor Spyder Express monitor calibration device to the club.  As the club had recently purchased a new Datacolor device for our computer, this one may very well be a prize at the end of the year.  The Board will get together to decide the best way to utilize this very generous donation to our club. If you have an idea for how we best utilize this device, please let me know and I will pass your suggestion on to the board.  

I don’t know about you, but I like to learn with visual lessons.  I have attended several photographic workshops but most of the time I learn from various YouTube photographic channels.    I learned Lightroom from Anthony Morganti and several others.  If you are a Canon shooter and like to photograph birds Tim Boyer has an excellent channel.  I find that Jamie Windsor really gives me something to think about when I watch his channel.  There are probably 15 YouTubers I follow that specialize in photography.  If you have a favorite channel let me know so I can share it with our members.  

Lastly, if you have an idea, or something we can all learn from, please share it with us.  I know we have members that share various programs or shows they have linked to our Facebook page.  There is so much wonderful content out there and we can’t all possibly see it or remember it all.  Please send me a link, or an article and I will see it gets shared with our members. At the end of the day we are all in this for enjoyment and learning.  So, get out there and take some shots.  

Mike

mdfunk@comcast.net