Photography Club

I belong to a photography club called "Photo Adventures Camera club". Their website is http://www.pacameraclub.com/ On that website are galleries of photography work of many of the members. Some of the members are retired photographers, some have had their work published in magazines, many have won multiple awards, and then there's a few that are definite newbies, just making the cross over from film to digital photography and want to learn. The club membership is only $10 per year and that is such a bargain. We have two meetings a month. The second Thursday of the month we have a roundtable discussion meeting, of which there are more and more round tables at the meetings because the club is growing by leaps and bounds! We discuss anything new in photography, new in photoshop programs, decide where to do a photoshoot, talk about any awards someone may have received, and then there's times they talk about upcoming events we've been asked to enter work into. When we're done with "business", we take out our cameras and learn something new.

When I joined the club a few years ago, I only had a point and shoot camera, but at least it was digital. My purpose of joining the club was my dog had delivered five beautiful puppies and I wanted some good photos of them to post online and I thought perhaps I could find someone who would take some photos for us. Well, I was so fortunate because when I mentioned they were Shar-Pei puppies (the ones with all the wrinkles), everyone wanted to just have a puppy photoshoot! What a delightful thing to hear!

So the photoshoot occured and the five little puppies were absolute hams for the camera...simply adorable. The picture posted is of the five puppies in a basket. The puppies were six weeks old. That basket is only about 18" wide and 9" deep. Isn't it an adorable photo? (No, I didn't take it.)

During the puppy photoshoot my husband Ken saw all the huge fancy cameras and he knew I wanted one of my own. So for that Christmas he did purchase a NIKON D200 camera for me. I was thrilled. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I was thrilled to have the camera. I knew I had to get more involved with the photo adventures camera club on a more regular basis. And I did.

When I first joined the club, there were mostly Canon cameras in use, and just two or three NIKON users. Today, a few years later, it's about half Canon users and half NIKON users.

The thing I like the most about the club is the people are friendly, they want you to learn your camera so much and enjoy photography that they share their knowledge with you, always willing to help. They make it fun, and trust me, learning these new complicated cameras can be frustrating.

So as soon as you feel you have your camera pretty well down, you realize you have more to learn because no matter how good of a photo you take, you need to tweek them a little on the computer. That's not easy to do or easy to learn. I'm still learning! But it's fun, I'm not complaining!

Tonight at the meeting they had their slideshow presentations. It's a fun night where all you do is sit back and enjoy the presentations of the other member's mini "movie", most of which are set to music. The variety tonight was plenty. I made one and at the end everyone said "AWWW" which made me feel good.

I may not have done much creative today, but I did have a good night at the camera club meeting and that's good enough for me.

Tomorrow I must work on the Spring Fest I am planning for the North Port Art Center. I need to buckle down and really push the event.