RCC Meeting March 15, 2024

March 15th, 2024 meeting of  RACINE CAMERA CLUB

Location: Gateway Racine Room: 254

David Fabian, Club President opened meeting with a Welcome on Pi Day

Presented RCC logo refurbished by Wes Fallon

Update on WACCO that they are updating their website…requesting 15 or 20 images from each club ffor their new website site.

Ten images were submitted for this month’s theme;  Down By The River…winning image of the challenge Hone Delights by Celia Schulz.

Discussion about requiring image submitters to vote on images or some other process to make voting scores more accurate. Will differ to next year’s program committee.

April challenge of the month New Beginnings to be submitted by March 31st at 11 pm. In club judging April 1st to April 9th @ 11 pm.

Spring Judged Competition – Black & White and General; 3 images each to be judged by 3 outside judges.

Next month’s topic presented by Wes and Allison will be Copyright and 

June meeting will be a business meeting and voting for a new slate of officers. Please reach out if you know ahead that you are definitely interest or have questions. Continuing Zoom meetings are an option with renewal of contract in August.

The Club owns a projector and screen and an older laptop. RCC e-mail and other information is in Google drive with 15GB’s of storage.

Please vote for PSA showcase of images ASAP Tom Leih is the Rep; score online or on paper. If on paper; take a picture and e-mail to Tom.

Caledonia Conservancy is presenting monthly contests with a theme each month including a category for children. Jeanne entered their competition for monies last year and won a couple categories. See caledoniaconservancy.org

Wes and Allison presented a talk and demonstration on Light Painting and Long Exposure. Very fun demonstration of his techniques using some of his frequently used lights and gadgets and how they are used to obtain the lighted effect he is looking for.  

Next meeting April 11th, 2024 at Gateway

Respectfully submitted,

Celia Schulz, Secretary

RCC Meeting November 9, 2023

Meeting at Gateway Technical College

Call to order by David Fabian at 7pm; some members arrived earlier to chat.

Details on meet-up for Holiday Parade by David and Joey. This Saturday, meet-up unofficially at the spot you want to photo from with an emphasis on Santa at the tree lighting on Monument Square. Dress warm and where good shoes!

Remember to get your auction items ready for the December Holiday auction.

Instructions reviewed on how to view and score the 2023 PSA showcase of images. We can not score our own 7 images. Score from 1-5 but try to not score less than 2, divide scoring in a sort of bell curve giving 4-6 a 2, 40 a 3, 40 a 4, and 10 a 5. Spreadsheets are e-mailed to Tom Leif or send in electronically to be completed by March 13th, 2024.

Reminder that Fall Judged competition closes tonight, November 9th at midnight. 3 general and 3 nature.You can submit anything from the past except 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.

Recognition to two members Mary Krajnak entered an image called ‘Magic’ and Celia Schulz entered an image called ‘Rufous’ in the Color Nature Projected category and Mary Krajnek also received an HM for ‘Vibrant Streaks’ in the Nature Special Theme category.

Critique of the month, Low Light, 7 images submitted incurred lively discussion of suggestions.

Help with images; 4 images submitted for suggestions on post-processing and composition. Much helpful discussion peking members knowledge.

Bill Sargent gave us an overview of obtaining a Certification through PPA and announced that Jacqueline Martin and her daughter Rebecca Martin. Congratulations have earned their title of Certified Professional Photographer. 

David Fabian gave us background on new Adobe upgrade issues that have not been addressed despite his trying to get them to be aware of security problems. Drema will take a look at this to help David get a response from Adobe.

See you on Saturday at Holiday Parade those that are coming down to take photos. Histogram presentation will be moved to the December meeting along with the Awesome Auction and Holiday food.

Next meeting December 14th, 2023 at 7pm; doors open at 6pm!

Respectfully submitted, Celia Schulz RCC Secretary

Racine Camera club Meeting at GTC October 12th, 2023

Racine Camera club Meeting at GTC October 12th, 2023

David Fabian, Club President opened the meeting in person and on Zoom at 7:00 pm

David showed a video presentation of some new abilities of Adobe software prior to meeting for those that gathered beforehand to chat.

First item of discussion initiated by David was about joining PSA’s website competition. Bill Seagent asked what the main goal would be. Discussion did not conclude with a yes or no vote but many advantages were brought up..

Second topic was putting a link to the on-line gallery. Send in your link. If you have any of the Adobe subscriptions you also get Adobe Portfolio for free

Discussion about having a business directory benefits brought up by Bill. Other Clubs don’t seem to have this available to the public. Our member list is private. The galleries are public and there can be a little more description as to what the photographer does for quick reference along with their name.

Third topic; Meeting notes are now able to be posted as a blog entry. Videos can also be posted through y-tube unlisted. After spirited discussion, only minutes will be published at this time. Discussion included whether video would be private or public and whether members and/or guest speakers would approve of being recorded. (Along with some person’s may be inhibited from speaking during a meeting).

There is also a schedule of events under the Event tab. It shows a calendar of upcoming dates to know.

Fourth topic: Should winning images be put on the public web-site? Discussion ensued on limited edition prints being ok to present on a public web-site .Name of image and maker will continue to be the norm for public posting.

Eleven images were posted for PSA competition, 7 will be submitted after judging on the 16th.

Jeanne Tyree-Francis Club VP spoke about current critique having only 6 participants and whether to continue with this format. After discussion, we will continue a few more months to see how people take to it. Topic this month was using two sources of light. Based on the talk tonight, The Exposure Triangle; Jeanne suggested a critique on photos taken in low light for November. Discussion about having a general photo up for critique monthly or on the website.

Decision was to have both a low light photo and a general I need help image for critique submitted. 

Jeanne announced that a Fall Competition will take place with up to 3 images in a General Category and up to 3 images in the Nature Category. The judges list she updated. Images are due at the time of the next meeting to be judged after that for the December meeting. 

Next portion of the meeting was a critique of the 6 images submitted taken with two light sources. Good discussions ensued especially on lighting and noise that led into the evening’s scheduled talk.

Wes Fallon and Allison Hamm gave us a presentation on shooting in manual mode and The Exposure Triangle with helpful handouts. Presentation generated good discussions and was well received.

The meeting ended at a little after 9:00 pm and will be held in the same location on November 9th, 2023.

Respectfully submitted,

Celia Schulz, Club Secretary

Summer 2023 Board Meeting

September 5th, 2023

Meeting by Zoom at 7pm

Attendees  David Fabian, Pres., Jeanie Tyree-Frances, VP, Celia Schulz, Sec., Irene Kuiper, Tres., Wes Fallon, Dir., Allison Hamme, Dir., Robert  Kohlman, Dir.

Secured room at Gateway is set for September and October for 6-9. Rooms can be used prior to meeting for pre-meetings or discussion/gathering; if before 6:30 when David arrives, key can be secured from security. 

Discussion on AI. Determination as club directors on this subject with a vote to follow. (Insert Statement). All were in favor of not including AI images. Individuals are responsible for their submissions on their honor. If there is an image that is a composite we would expect the image maker to footnote the individual original images, of their own making, used to make the final composite. We would expect that an AI creation would not be submitted as there is not a focus for that type of digital art as part of the RCC. We remain focused on images created either by film or digital with photoshop allowed.

David discussed the two committees that we have being the Competition Committee and the Program Committee. See Addendum for previous and revised by-laws. Jeannie agreed to Chair the Competition Committee with Allison, Wes, and Irene.

Discussion for the Program Committee was initiated by David with an emphasis on tapping into the general club members. Allison Hamm volunteered to Chair the position with support by Wes Fallon and evolved into a Co-Chair of the Program Committee by the two. Additional members to be secured from the general Club members.

Webco is no longer our web server. The website has been fully migrated to an Amazon service.

Allison asked what our dues go towards. Dues are $20 and we have very little expenses except paying judges at $50 each when they are secured for a competition.

Discussion on what perks would be available for increased fees hypothetically. Extending summer months may be a time for meet-ups. Festivals, church fests, Racine County Fair, more photo ops during summer. Possibly RCC covering ½ of a paid event to attend. 

Discussion about having paid speakers either at a meeting or a separate event with a cost if the speaker is expensive but people are interested.

Ideas for judging, 12 point critique down to three last year to make it more user friendly. Once a month topic possibly with no competition. Consensus was to select an image from the month time period to continue as a rule to encourage the community to get out and learn new/perfect old skills. 

David talked about meeting formats. One idea is that we could have 10-15 minute sessions of a member or 2/3 talking about their work, not a critique but a display of images from their portfolio.

Zoom will be available for Directors/Chairs to use for meetings. David would be sending the code out as the Zoom account is connected to his IP Address being the main host for security.

Club memberships run out October 13th. Dues will need to be in at the second meeting.

David will mainly be doing publicity and handling web page and FB page but will also join a committee if needed.

PSA and WACCO reps are open seats not voted on last year end. David will check with Jeff Klug to see what is required.

Possible agenda for October; depth of field entry (hypothetically) that can be sent in to an e-mail address, not excluding non-members. Discussion to be on that topic of which the best example images would be submitted for either just discussion or scoring. Type of scoring method to be determined.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Respectfully submitted, Celia Schulz, Secretary