Monday, December 29, 2014

Putting Together a Member's Handbook for your Club

You Need a Member Handbook

If you are going to be a structured camera club, with officers, and club rules, etc, you definitely need to have a member handbook. The handbook will describe the procedure for electing offices, voting on pictures, collecting member dues, and all the other business of the club that needs to be documented.

I have belonged to large clubs without any governing rules, and I've belonged to small clubs with a very specific set of rules. The one factor that seems to be a common denominator is the age of the club. The older the club (40, 50, 60, 70+ years), the more likely it is to have a written set of rules.

Make sure all your members have access to the Member Handbook. It should serve not only to document how the club is to conduct itself, but it should also serve as a FAQ about the club for your members.

Where do I Find Examples?



Many Camera Clubs post their member handbooks online. If you need to put together a handbook on your own, you may want to use one of theirs as an example (just don't be lazy and copy it, make it your own.)

These are some links to clubs that have their member handbooks online.

Simsbury Camera Club
Silver Spring Camera Club
South Shore Camera Club
Pilchuck Camera Club
Coastal Camera Club

...and you can find dozens more just by going to Google and searching for "Camera Club Member Handbook".

Then What?


Once you have your handbook written, it needs to be approved by the people who will be governed by it. It is up to your group to decide how it will be voted on, and since the matter is being discussed, it might be a good idea at this time to decide how changes to the handbook will be allowed in the future.

It is best to have your handbook in one central location available to all members. This location should hold the most up-to-date version of the document. Many clubs store the handbook on their website in PDF format. Handing out printed documents of the handbook is fine, but just realize that anytime you make a revision to the original, it is a BIG project to make sure everyone gets updated.

On occasion, remind your members about the handbook, and encourage them to review it from time to time. Also encourage them to suggest changes or additions.

Anticipate your camera club is going to still be around in the 2060's or 2070's? Might be a good idea to get yourself a member's handbook.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Camera Cleaning Day!

Sooner or later, that sensor inside your camera is going to need a little cleaning. Yes, you CAN take on this task by yourself, but, having it done by a professional is preferable.

via Digital Camera World
If you have a camera shop nearby that offers camera cleaning, ask if they would be willing to have someone attend your meeting and do cleanings for the members. While some may turn you down, you can bet there are other ones out there who would be happy to come and do camera cleanings at a discount, or maybe even free! If they are unwilling to come to one of your meetings, ask if they would be willing to donate a few gift certificates for free cleanings that you could offer to your members, perhaps as prizes for a photo competition.

If that doesn't work for you, ask your members if any of them feel they have enough experience in camera cleaning to demonstrate it to the group. As always, your "expert" in something doesn't have to be a professional in the field, just someone who has more knowledge on a subject than the average person. If you have members that dutifully clean their camera sensors every six months all by themselves, they are more than qualified to provide a demonstration on how to clean a camera.

Also, there are a BUNCH of YouTube videos out there that show how to clean a camera sensor. You could show a couple of these videos to your club, and then have a discussion afterwards. Make sure everyone knows both the benefits (cheaper, quicker, plus spend less time Photoshopping out dust spots) and hazards of cleaning their own camera (being a sad panda because you MISALIGNED or SCRATCHED your sensor, and now instead of a small, almost imperceptible piece of dust, you have a huge scratch in every one of your images, that are always a little out of focus because of the sensor not being where it should be.) Once the mystery is gone, people are more likely to take the task in hand.




Some important things to consider when cleaning your own sensor.


NO compressed air.. it's too powerful and may mis-align your mirror or sensor. If you are crazy enough to hold the can upside down, you also spray chemicals into your open camera body. I prefer the Giottos Rocket Air Blaster.

NEVER reuse sensor swabs. They are designed for ONE use only. if you need to get back in there and clean some more, use a new swab.

Don't do cleaning with a weak battery. Your camera will need to hold the mirror up for a few minutes while you are cleaning. If your battery dies during the process, your mirror may come down, it may damage the mirror, or create debris on your sensor.

And here is a decent video of the proper way to clean a sensor.




TEN Great Ideas For Your Next Photo Competition - Part Two

And we're back, with five MORE ideas (to make a total of ten.. get it?) for your next photo competition.

  1. Have a smartphone? Get yourself a copy of OKDOTHIS. OKDOTHIS is an app for iPhone (Android coming soon?) that has just bucketloads of inspiration for taking pictures. While many ideas may not suit your specific group, the sheer number of ideas the app contains could provide you with unique photo competitions for years. Go to the webpage to see some sample ideas and images that users have submitted.
  2. via kringle.com
  3. Appease the Subject Matter Expert! Does your town manufacture a product of some kind that is somewhat unique to your area? Something that is accessible to all your members? In my hometown of Racine, WI, we have the Case Corporation, that manufactures agricultural tractors. We are also one of the few places in the United States that you can get yourself a kringle, a tasty treat so obscure that spell check doesn't even recognize it. Just to the north of us, in Milwaukee, is the Harley Davidson headquarters, and more breweries than you can shake a stick at. The point that I've failed to make up to this point, is that when we have photo competitions, we usually have photography experts come in and judge the images on their technical merits, composition, etc, however, there isn't any rule that says you can't have a subject matter expert judge pictures as well. So, contact your local bakery with the best doughnut maker in town, and have him come in and give his opinion of your creative doughnut images!
  4. Give your members a lighting challenge. Instruct them that the image for the next competition can only be lit by a specific light source. Such as? Well, how about a single light bulb, a full moon, or a flashlight. Of course, longer exposure images would benefit greatly from a good tripod.

    You'll need a good tripod for long exposures.


  5. OK, it's only a 3 second exposure. 
  6. Use features on your camera you might have seldom, or never, used before. We are told that we should always have our camera set to the lowest ISO possible, that the higher ISO's cause grain. We are told to always use the fastest shutter speed we can, that slow shutter speeds mean blurry pictures. Well, how about a contest where all the images must have been shout at 3,200 (or higher) ISO, or all the images must have been shot with a 30 second exposure? 
  7. Alphabet soup! Pick a letter of the alphabet, and all the images have to have a subject that begins with that letter. Try to think back to grade school when the teacher taught you the alphabet by showing you pictures of things that began with a certain letter. Don't make it easy by using "S" or "T" or one of those popular letters. Give them a "G" or a "W". If you are in a particularly mean mood, give them "X"
Double points if your assigned letter is "B", and you
get a good image of a Bee. Trust me, no one will see
that coming.. hilarious!
Annnd, here's your bonus again.. a remarkabley similar list to the last one I linked you to, however, this one has links to sample images.

TEN Great Ideas For Your Next Photo Competition - Part One

Most photo competitions I've seen have been pretty generic. Tell me if any of these sound familiar...
Note the coffee cup that I totally didn't see until I was
almost done editing.


  • "Trees"
  • "Moving Water"
  • "Yellow"
  • "Birds"
  • "Spring"
  • "Shapes"

OK, so, these topics are generic enough to allow for a lot of interpretation. That's not all bad. However, the problem is, a lot of times, these topics fit right into someone's wheelhouse. Maybe you have one or two members who have that neat-o 400mm 2.8 lens, and their favorite subject for the past 30 years has been "Birds." They'll just pick out one of a thousand of decent bird pictures out of their collection, and everyone else in the club is fighting for 2nd place, waiting for something more interesting that a sparrow to shoot a picture of.

"Trees"? Well, just be ready for a couple dozen pictures of trees. Maybe one or two might be interesting, but otherwise? Yawn!

Why not make your topic a challenge for everyone? Make your topic something obscure.. 

  1. Instead of "The Holidays", have your members pull an ornament off their Christmas tree, or take a colored Easter egg out of the basket. Use that item as an element in a decidedly "non-holiday" themed picture. For instance, a bulb ornament off the Christmas tree could be added to a bowl of fruit for an interesting still life. Or, have a juggler friend juggle three Easter eggs. Use your Fourth of July sparklers to do fun light painting images.
  2. Similar to the previous idea, on your way to your club meeting, stop at the store and spend a dollar or two. Buy a bag of small, plastic, army men, or a package of marshmallows, or couple dozen rolls of generic toilet paper. Give each member one of the items, and tell them the image they make has to include the item as an element. It doesn't have to be the main subject, but it has to play a role in the image!
  3. Lyrics as inspiration. This has always been a big one for me. I myself, have a FANTASTIC image in my head that I have yet to put together, based on the "J" song from Seasame Street, ("J, Joe, Jeans and His Jellybeans".) Present a song with descriptive lyrics, Something like "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth" by Meatloaf or "Good For Your Soul" by Oingo Boingo. Pretty much any song written by Jim Morrison would work. Heck, if you have a younger crowd, pick a Ke$ha song (on the other hand, if your group is mostly older, retired people, give THEM the Ke$ha song and let hilarity ensue!) Tell your members to take ONLY ONE LINE from the lyrics of the song, and use that as inspiration for an image. The images doesn't have to do ANYTHING with what the song is actually about, but, the image should reflect the line from the lyrics. Heck, you could even require them to make their chosen lyric the TITLE of their image. Here are some potential titles from just those two songs I mentioned: "Not Another Moment To Waste", "No Matter What I do, I just Can't Seem to Make Any Sound", "No One's Gonna Know Where You Been", "Images so Strange and Foreign", "It Kept You Wide Awake At Night", "The Whole Thing Slips Right Through Your Fingers"
  4. Have a lot of Photoshoppers in your group? Or, maybe you have a lot of "Old School" photographers who are creative enough to do this in-camera. See who can create the best "Unexplained Phenomena" image. Ghost floating down the steps? Bigfoot running though your backyard? UFO in the sky? Elvis at the drive-thru? Make believers out of us! Bonus points should be given to any images that get published in the National Enquirer.
  5. Photo-ception. A photograph, within a photograph, within a photograph...
Bonus Tip - Now that you are done here, go check out the World's Longest List of Photo Contest Ideas! I don't know if it actually is, but it's a long list!

Thursday, December 18, 2014

The Very First Post on This Blog

Hello World.. 

The First Paragraph

This is the window that the "alt text" is in.
This image has nothing to do with the story.
It is just a picture of a log with some rope wrapped around it.
It's yet ANOTHER pit stop on the information superhighway! This blog post is just a test, so, don't pay it no mind. I just have to type in a bunch of stuff here so I can get on with picking out a template and formatting and all that good stuff. As a matter of fact, after I am done typing this paragraph, I will just most likely just copy and paste it a few more times to get enough text in here to make it easier to see my changes. Also, I'll take the opportunity to work on my SEO and get an occasional hit or two. So, keep in mind, that the following headings are completely made up, and in no way reflect anything in real life (to the best of my knowledge.) So, there! Oh, and the pictures you'll see, may or may not have anything to do with the headline. Nor does this link to my Facebook page.

Kim Kardashian Reveals She Had Affair with Brad Pitt's Dad!


See, no basis at all for that. Completely made up. But, some search engine somewhere is gonna pick that up and maybe it was you that clicked to get here because of that headline... and now, for some cut and pasted text.

Does a big, inflated, hot air balloon have anything
to do with Kim Kardashian? I'll let you decide.

It's yet ANOTHER pit stop on the information superhighway! This blog post is just a test, so, don't pay it no mind. I just have to type in a bunch of stuff here so I can get on with picking out a template and formatting and all that good stuff. As a matter of fact, after I am done typing this paragraph, I will just most likely just copy and paste it a few more times to get enough text in here to make it easier to see my changes. Also, I'll take the opportunity to work on my SEO and get an occasional hit or two. So, keep in mind, that the following headings are completely made up, and in no way reflect anything in real life (to the best of my knowledge.) So, there!

American Olympic Swim Team to Trade Places with Olympic Curling Team


See, another made up headline. But, someone somewhere is going to see it, and click to get here. how weird is that. So, again with the pasting. It's yet ANOTHER pit stop on the information superhighway! This blog post is just a test, so, don't pay it no mind. I just have to type in a bunch of stuff here so I can get on with picking out a template and formatting and all that good stuff. As a matter of fact, after I am done typing this paragraph, I will just most likely just copy and paste it a few more times to get enough text in here to make it easier to see my changes. Also, I'll take the opportunity to work on my SEO and get an occasional hit or two. So, keep in mind, that the following headings are completely made up, and in no way reflect anything in real life (to the best of my knowledge.) So, there!

Scientists Discover Why Men Like Boobs and Butts and Legs and Stuff


This is my friend, Michael Rosen. He was awesome.
It's a given fact that if you write racy headlines, and use works in your story like "nude" and "sex" and other such words, traffic will go up. And isn't that what it is all about? Annnnd, we paste again. It's yet ANOTHER pit stop on the information superhighway! This blog post is just a test, so, don't pay it no mind. I just have to type in a bunch of stuff here so I can get on with picking out a template and formatting and all that good stuff. As a matter of fact, after I am done typing this paragraph, I will just most likely just copy and paste it a few more times to get enough text in here to make it easier to see my changes. Also, I'll take the opportunity to work on my SEO and get an occasional hit or two. So, keep in mind, that the following headings are completely made up, and in no way reflect anything in real life (to the best of my knowledge.) So, there!

And that, if you've read this far, is that.