From the Club President…
Our summer hiatus is quickly coming to a close at least for those of us who are planning our 2020-21 club year. We have been busy implementing GoToWebinar, training our critique reviewers, and developing our program for the coming year.
We had our first club meeting with GoToWebinar in which I did a presentation on our photo critiques. I think the features of GoToWebinar helped to make my presentation more successful. It was easy to share my PowerPoint presentation as well as handouts that included a presentation pdf and some critique documents. Attendees (the audience) were able to ask questions via a Q&A tool, and I was able to respond to them during periodic pauses in the presentation. The attendees were also engaged in poll questions that asked and reported their opinions within seconds.
In the presentation, I talked about our critique criteria, writing critique comments, scoring images, and image recognitions. This is part of a required workshop for all photo critique judges, but many were not able to attend. This is where one of the best features of GoToWebinar becomes significant – the ability to record webinars and share them. Here is a link that judges or anyone interested can use to register to view the recorded presentation. We can not only share the recording, but we can track who views the recording. So, judges who missed the live webinar, this is a reminder to get started with the critique workshop by viewing this recording.
Elaine Belvin and Pam Holmes have developed a wonderful program for our upcoming year beginning this month with Marc Muench and followed by impressive speakers including Ian Plant, Shane McDermott, JR Schnelzer, Sean Bagshaw, Adam Schallau and Dawn Kish. Many if not all of these presentations will be delivered via GoToWebinar. Again, the ability to record webinars and share them offers us another opportunity. GoToStage is a video hosting platform that comes with GoToWebinar and will allow us to store webinar recordings and other videos in a channel exclusively for our members. This could also include recorded workshops and one-on-one mentoring sessions as well as our video slideshows.
With our COVID-19 challenges come some new opportunities – we hope that our efforts will lead to a successful year for our members and the club. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Best wishes for good health and great photos,
Brad
president.sedonacameraclub@gmail.com
Next Club Meeting
Our next club meeting will be Monday, August 31 via GoToWebinar. We will open the webinar to attendees at 5:50 pm to allow some time to test the attendee interface. Our program will begin promptly at 6:00 pm.
Please note that if you registered for the July camera club meeting, you do not need to register again for the August meeting. If you have not already registered for the July or August meetings, then you must register with this link. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Third generation photographer Marc Muench will be our speaker at the upcoming Sedona Camera Club meeting.
Photography combines the sciences and arts in a unique way that motivates creativity, emotion, and art. The elusive aspects of the craft are the elements that make it an art and simultaneously make it challenging to master. During his webinar, “Creative Thinking”, Marc will break parts of this down into bite-size pieces. There are many ways to improve your landscape photography, but beginning to understand creative thinking is one of the most critical
methods. Marc will show examples of his work, from landscapes to wildlife scenes, created under challenging and varied conditions. During the second part of Marc’s presentation, he will demonstrate his post-processing techniques that will make your images look good and print well. Marc will include techniques presented in his latest eBook, “The Art of Luminosity.” These techniques, if practiced correctly, will show your work in a professional and exciting way.
Attendees are eligible to win $500 off any of Muench Workshops’ future workshops, including a one-on-one portfolio review.
Muench continues the photographic excellence of his grandfather Josef and father David. He is an internationally renowned landscape photographer with eleven books, ESPN outdoor shows and numerous magazine, calendar and poster titles to his credit. Marc blends landscapes and wildlife to create his own visual style. Having spent the first 20 years of his career in the publishing world as a freelance photographer, Marc gained his experience in the world of image creation, which he would ultimately apply to his teaching career. As a partner of Muench Workshops, he has led over 100 expeditions around the world, teaching his love and passion for nature photography in such locations as Greenland, Africa, Norway and Antarctica. Marc was designated as a Hasselblad “Ambassador” in 2016 for his continued work in the field of landscape and nature photography.
Club Events, Workshops, Photo Opps and Trips
September Photo Critiques
You can submit images for the September Digital Critiques until September 2 by going to the Submit Critique Images page under the Members tab on our website. This page has links to all the information that you need to submit images. At our September meeting, photos from our first Digital Critiques will be presented by Digital Chair Tim See, and detailed scores and comments will be available online.
Arizona Camera Club Council
Save the date! Arizona Camera Club Council Virtual Round-up will be held on November 14, 2020. The event will start at 8:30 am and end at 11:00 am with a $5 registration fee. The speaker for the round-up will be Colleen Miniuk who will speak on Visualization-Driven Photography: From Idea to Print. Registration will be online with more details to come. The competition will be digital-only. Enter at arizonacameraclubcouncil.org.
“Reflections of COVID Days” photo challenge!
As a reminder:
The only content requirements are that submissions must relate reasonably to your experiences during these COVID times. Your objective should be “interestingness;” perhaps poignant, funny, clever, contemplative, ironic, sad, etc.
There will be no critiques or scoring. In this challenge, we are sharing our experiences, not artfulness or photography expertise. You can use any camera, iPhone, iPad, you name it.
You may submit up to two (2) photographs. All submissions will be featured in a special August meeting slideshow.
Your photos can be taken anywhere that enables you to create images that relate to our theme.
Rules and Guidelines
This challenge is open only to club members.
All images must be photographs that you have taken since February of this year. If you don’t have any early photos, take them between now and August 18!
You may submit up to two (2) photographs. Do as little or as much processing as you wish, but remember, content is key.
All submissions will be included in a slideshow during the August meeting as long as they relate to the topic and are not clearly offensive by general societal standards. (If we must make such exclusions, the member will be notified in advance by email with an explanation.)
Challenge Photo Submission Procedures
You must use the following filename convention to enable us to record your name and the photos’ titles with your images: Your Name – Title of the Photo. In other words, save your photo on your computer as a jpeg (only) like this example: Mary Smith – Toilet Paper Crisis.jpg
Upload your photos to this link.
There is NO resolution sizing rules. But for the best clarity in the slide show, please don’t submit very low-resolution images.
The deadline for submission is 9 p.m. August 18.
Hopefully, together we can build a slideshow that will be an interesting and entertaining Sedona Camera Club record of our 2020. The slideshow will be accessible indefinitely in our website Gallery.
Updates from our Board Members
Membership Dues: You can pay your dues online from our home page or the members-only website.
Members-Only Website: The members-only website has been updated with all the changes and functionality that have been discussed previously. Helpful information is available on most menus.
Mentoring Program: The club’s mentoring program page has been updated. Check out all the resources that have been collected under the Members tab on our website.
Membership Committee: Sally Nelson has developed a framework for developing Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for the club. Steve Wells has an outline for a New Member Orientation. Look for more information from Sally and Steve regarding these initiatives in the coming weeks.
New Mailing Address: As you may have noticed from the banner at the top of this newsletter, the Sedona Camera Club has a new mailing address. Please update your contacts with 2675 West SR 89A #1293, Sedona AZ 86336.
Sedona Photo Symposium: All speakers for August 2021 have been booked, and the website has been updated to reflect the 2021 schedule. Symposium registrants will be invited to join our monthly club webinars, as an incentive to keep them engaged after we postponed the event.
