More Club Activities During
Pandemic
Milt Williamson / Upper
Cape Camera Club (MA)
Our last live meeting
was March 11 and we had to forfeit only our second March meeting before we got
the Zoom platform up and running.
The club competitions for
April and May were held with the scheduled judges. We noticed the virtual
attendance actually increased, now including members who were still away for
the winter.
The two planned
programs, one a seminar on Matting, Framing and Exhibiting by two local
commercial shops and the second a session with a local backup
specialist had to be postponed as not being practical over Zoom.
These were substituted
with two excellent Zoom presentations, one by Brewster photographer Steven
Koppel and another by Carver professionals Bobbi Lane and Lee Varis. I had been
trying for some time to arrange a date with Bobbi & Lee and now because
they were also in lockdown we arranged a successful program for May.
Our last meeting for the
season traditionally featured a Photos of the Year competition combined with a
“pot luck supper”. Zoom canceled the supper but the competition went on successfully with three judges from three clubs including
comments and challenges.
We were able to use our
normal judging and competition system — Visual Pursuits Judging and VP
Image Competition Manager — along with the Zoom video conferencing system for
our normal competition meetings and the combination works quite well.
We continued our monthly
meetings for the Steering Committee involving eleven members scattered across
the Upper Cape as well as a member in California and two in Florida. These
Steering Committee meetings are now continuing throughout the summer via Zoom.
A planned annual exhibit
of prints is now a virtual exhibit at the Falmouth Public Library. A January
print competition category, “Cape Cod & Islands Boats” is the theme of the
exhibit. In June it was arranged and ”hung" by a committee over Zoom. Here
is the link to the exhibit at the Falmouth Public Library <https://tinyurl.com/y72xp6j5>.
Many of our members are
participating in other area exhibits and shows so photography is still very
much alive at Upper Cape Camera Club.
With an unpredictable future
for live meetings, even though our meeting place, The Falmouth Art Center, is
now open and will become available in September, our membership is larger than
the size of groups allowed to hold meetings, at least for the next few months.
We will be planning to make use of the Zoom platform for competitions and
programs. The challenge with many of the available webinars out there is to
find the ones that are not scheduled for any particular time slot, but live
ones where club members can ask questions, comment and so forth.
Chuck
Fleishman Oxford Green Camera Club (CT)
While the course
itself is free there are several prompts to register for a certificate at
$49. You won’t get feedback unless you sign-up for the certificate.
There are also optional surveys about health, politics, etc.
I Googled Free
Photography Webinars 2020 and came up with several interesting
links. While I have not investigated or tried any to date I am going to
try one of the courses in the link below:
Henry Winkelman
Boston Camera Club(MA)
The
Boston Camera Club (BCC) switched to only meetings via webex and now ZOOM - we
held competitions, photo critiques, a Tri-Club competition with the Stony Brook
and Gateway clubs - and all the speakers scheduled for the spring presented on
line.
Although our meetings usually end in June, this
summer the BCC has had programs almost every two weeks - including digital
competitions, photo critiques, Essdras Suarez presented in July and Jack Curran
will be with us in August.
The BCC was scheduled to have an exhibit in one
of the local libraries. That set of images was set-up in an on-line gallery.
Our newsletter comes out monthly Sept - June. The
BCC Blog is sent our weekly or more often to alert the members to photography
news.
Plans are being made now for net year. We
anticipate being online for many more months.
The church where we meet has not decided on
re-opening plans. Near the end of August Tom Hill, our president, plans to poll
the members to see if they are comfortable returning to our meeting space when
it will be available.
At the current time - we expect to be meeting on
ZOOM for many more months.
Members have expressed an interest in having
ZOOM meetings at times - even after we can return to meetings - especially
during winter months when travel can be a problem. Also, many members live a
distance from our meeting
place - and with the ZOOM meetings they are able
to participate and attend more meetings.
Lisa Lacasse
Quichee Camera Club (VT)
The Quechee Area Camera
Club in Vermont uses Meetup as our platform. It continues to serve us
well. I got ZOOM for the club in early April and it has worked well for
us.
We have continued to
have “assignments” each week(or every 10 days) that members can photograph,
post and make comments on. Assignments have included: Photographing Car
Streaks, Photograph Solitude, Scavenger Hunt, Shoot the Same Subject 15
different ways, Reflections, Macro, Sports, Summer Story Telling, Self
Portrait, Abstracts, Shutter Speed Fun, Leaves and Trees, Animals - tell your
story 2 ways, the color red and a couple different Scavenger Hunts.
Members can start the assignment on their own time but they post their
images between the start and end date of the assignment (about 10 days).
We ask that for each photo uploaded members comment on 2-3 others.
We have also had quite a
few ZOOM meetings. 3 of our regular speakers who we would have presented
in person just did ZOOM calls - One was a professional critique, One on
Lightroom, One on Portraits, and One on Anatomy of an Image. The club
felt it was important to honor our commitments to these professionals who
have supported our club with their time and we didn’t mind paying them for
their time. We have also had several ZOOM calls where we share members
photos and have open discussions on them. We are starting to do ZOOM
calls on specific subjects - we just did one on Photography as a Business and
how do you store your photos - By having both of those subjects we appealed to
both our members that are trying to sell images and also those who just want to
know the best way to keep their images safe. We will continue to add
these into the mix.
In addition, we have sent
out to the members via emails info about free webinars, free videos to watch
and learn from as well as different photography sites to explore.
Bill Barnett Connecticut
Association of Photographers
I think this collection
of ideas is great and I hope to participate in your video meetings starting
Aug. 4. These are weird times and lots of creativity is needed.
I have a new program
(“Infrared Connecticut”) that I can present to any club that has a Zoom
account, or possibly Global Meeting that I will use for the first time in
October when I am scheduled to present to GBCC. My other programs wouldn’t work
well in this environment due to video and lots of zooms and pans that can look
awful for anyone with a slow internet connection (I know, I tested it with a
Zoom meeting between my desktop and laptop).
Clubs that are doing
judging virtually should be encouraged to recruit judges from further away than
normal since distance doesn’t matter. The just concluded PSA portfolio
assessment session using Zoom had judges from CT, Nova Scotia, the midwest,
and California. This is a chance to get different points of view for club
competitions. PSA has a club judging service ( https://psa-photo.org/index.php?club-judging-service) and they might be willing to recommend judges for clubs that are
PSA members.
Dennis Goulet Photographic
Society of Rhode Island (RI)
PSRI has had two digital and print
competitions, The images were judged ahead of time with the judge and then a
zoom meeting was conducted with the members to comment on the images and
announce the winners. For the prints we did a digital version on the first
judging, then for the last print competition judging holding the print
competition and Print of the Year judging at the same time with only two staff
and the two Judges. We then used digital images of the prints to conduct the
presentation and comments on the prints using a Zoom meeting.
I gave a Zoom presentation to the
Medford Center for the Arts in April, and PSRI has had presentations from TJ
Thorne, Tony Sweet, Rad Drew, and on the 28th we have Charles
Glazer, Canon Explorer of Light.
Dave Westlake Quiet Corner
Camera Club (CT)
To keep active during the Pandemic
we are doing the following:
·
We have a monthly
digital photo challenge. The members are given a theme, Images are posted on
SmugMug and voted on by the members
·
We are planning to
hold monthly Zoom meetings. We are compiling a viewing list of Youtube videos
and/or webinars. One will be chosen by the board initially and the members will
view it at their leisure and it will be the topic of discussion in the virtual
club meeting.
Any suggestions from other clubs
concerning virtual or safe distancing activities would be greatly appreciated.
Dennis Goulet Photographic
Society of Rhode Island (RI)
PSRI has had two digital and print
competitions, The images were judged ahead of time with the judge and then a
zoom meeting was conducted with the members to comment on the images and
announce the winners. For the prints we did a digital version on the first
judging, then for the last print competition judging holding the print
competition and Print of the Year judging at the same time with only two staff
and the two Judges. We then used digital images of the prints to conduct the
presentation and comments on the prints using a Zoom meeting.
I gave a Zoom presentation to the
Medford Center for the Arts in April, and PSRI has had presentations from TJ
Thorne, Tony Sweet, Rad Drew, and on the 28th we have Charles
Glazer, Canon Explorer of Light.
Dave Westlake Quiet Corner
Camera Club (CT)
To keep active during the Pandemic
we are doing the following:
·
We have a monthly
digital photo challenge. The members are given a theme, Images are posted on
SmugMug and voted on by the members
·
We are planning to
hold monthly Zoom meetings. We are compiling a viewing list of Youtube videos
and/or webinars. One will be chosen by the board initially and the members will
view it at their leisure and it will be the topic of discussion in the virtual
club meeting.
Any suggestions from other clubs
concerning virtual or safe distancing activities would be greatly appreciated.
