Hi Folks,
Annual General Meeting Tuesday 17th May
Well I think there were official minutes of this meeting being taken which leaves me to carry on blogging on the evening in my usual way but I have grouped together some of the subject matter raised.
Aussie Allen our chairman said the club has had a good year but he has decided to stand down but more on that later as the fears of being nominated caused most of us to notice how well the hall floor was polished tonight lol.
Allen went on to say the committee tonight would be transparent on the things put across to us on the floor and it was our chance as members to voice ideas / concerns regarding anything raised at the meeting.
Allen went on to say the club now needed a new projector and this coming year the quality of the club’s programme has been boosted and as such will require a higher budget but this hopefully will attract a higher membership, as the membership was lower than the previous year.
The Treasurer’s report (which had been verified) said the club was in a healthy profit
Brian the webmaster reported the club’s website had had a similar number of hits as in the previous year, (probably the majority from me correcting my blogs lol). The website is presently going through a Spring clean and member’s if they so wished can now add their photographs in sections individually set up for them.
The club’s Face book page run by Dawn and Neil has taken off well and is already having good communications between the members and club friends on subjects like camera products and ideas.
Club Internal Competition Themes
This year the committee has decided to only have five ‘Theme’ / ‘Open’ nights for the usual internal competition and to be run under the same format as last year (Two Theme and one Open or vice versa) and additionally have three ‘winner on the night’ competitions. Also one of these ‘winner on the night’ competitions will be held early on in the season to allow new members to see how the club’s competition entry system works and what happens in competition nights
During the evening a list was passed around with the committee’s narrowed down selection of eight themes for this year’s internal competitions and then for members to pick their three favourites, the five most popular overall would be this year’s themes.
Later it was announced in no particular order that the five would be
(1) Water, (2) Time, (3) Nature, (4) Texture and (5) Alternative Viewpoint.
So we can all go out over the summer period to get those required images.
There will be two more trophies given out this coming year with one given to the winner of the Themes Category and another given for the winner of the Open Category as it was noted that some members fared better in one category or the other
A member suggested that one ‘dummy’ photograph should be entered in each of the club’s internal competitions just to see how each judge would mark it. It was thought a good idea but I don’t have at this point in time, any idea which photograph it will be and anyway one of the judges could read this but if he/she does read it, it’s not my Forget-me-Nots lol
On the Theme subjects Aussie Allen said he can’t offer any suggestions of help on what to photograph saying, if the subject was say ‘Leather ‘and he was asked and then said “what is your wallet made of “, we might get two or three photographs of wallets for the judge to see and what then if the judge on the night didn’t think they were appropriate.
So it’s up to the members’ to think outside the box, which in my mind then had the thoughts of using Photoshop to layer moths over a wallet to make it look more authentic lol
The Programme Secretary said the programme for this year will include two more Critique nights which have proved popular this year.
For new members, these are nights where you can present (up to six) of your favourite photographs to run past our four Judges and on the night they will give constructive opinions on each picture without marking them.
Allen said he noticed several photographs shown on previous Critique nights which had later been dramatically improved for the competitions.
Any member struggling with photographs can also bring them along on a laptop or IPod to get advice from any of our club’s four Judges
More Practical nights, Tutorials, some high quality speakers, lighting courses and Post Processing lessons have been arranged including a course on using the body of any camera (excluding the Brownie 127) lol.
For this summer season
A barbeque at a member’s house,
A visit to Quainton Railway,
A Treasure hunt (said not to be too hard and for the over sixties, “IT’S FOUND IN A TOWER WITH BLUE FLAGS, CAN YOU SEE ANY FLAGS ANNIE lol ),
A visit to the top of the Council’s building (watch out for wayward flying Drones in both this and the last event lol),
A Nature Reserve
and what I thought sounded like ‘Light Painting’ (I must find out what that is about as I think I may have misheard???).
However plenty of opportunities for taking photographs
The Chairman said for him the club was a wonderful way of meeting like minded people, giving friendly advice, getting good ideas from other clubs and letting other clubs look at us.
Coffee and Tea
Allen said some members had moaned about the price of a £1 for tea or coffee but pointed out it pays for the cups, coffee, milk, biscuits, Judges / Speaker’s fees. On night’s of less than 23 members attending it doesn’t even pay the cost of the hall.
A similar list compile each night for safety could allow the money to be collected at the door and coffee will be free but more on that later.
The problem with getting members to do the tea and coffee rota on club night has been resolved with Sherron and Nick kindly offering to run it for this year, so a big thank you to them both.
New Screen Projector
A new club projector is required and will be capable of displaying 1600 x 1200 size photographs and this will probably become a standard size in many clubs in the future. The club’s old project 1400 x 1050 has some green splodges on one side and a blue and green marks appearing elsewhere. (No wonder the judges’ were struggling to give me any high marks in the competitions this year, obviously all that graffiti in the street photography must have given Steve that winning advantage lol)
Chiltern Imagez
This is an exhibition held this last year at the Queen’s Park Art centre which was a little rushed and John is going to get things going a lot earlier this coming year.
A Welcome Pack
The committee thought it was a good idea for new members to receive a welcome pack explaining how competitions work and other information like committee members names and general information but it was said a lot of the information was on the website. However, Allen pointed out a few people are not familiar with using the website.
Another member would like the names of members on the website but it was pointed out this is not always a good thing to display names addresses etc for all to see on the internet but perhaps could be tailored internally for members.
Member’s wearing badges in the evenings was again suggested which has been previously tried. Another suggestion was that on Tuesday nights the club has a board with people’s names along with their photographs (or a suggestion of tattoos on our foreheads caused a titter)
Club Fees
With the new boosted programme coming this year with top quality speakers and a new expensive Projector required, it was felt the current fees may not comfortably meet the club’s target and although the club has the funds it would rather not go below the club’s contingency base
And it was proposed to increase them to a one off £85 with free coffee /entrance fee or two half year fees of £42.50
Or
£40 with a weekly £2 coffee / entrance fee
Or
£40 with a weekly £1 coffee / entrance fee with a proviso of the committee being allowed to raise it later if need be
After a long deliberation it was agreed to go with
£40 with a weekly increase to £2 for coffee / entrance fee (or with anybody giving £85 up front will be regarded as having paid for all weekly entrance fees)
Club Committee changes
So lastly the Club’s new Chairman is Chris who has volunteered after being sounded out and agreed, provided Allen acted as Vice Chairman for this year. Luke has taken Chris’s role and Vicki has stepped down with Nick taking her role. If any members would like to help out for say just an hour it will make the committee’s roles so much easier
Chris thanked Allen on our behalf for his services as Chairman and a round of applause was given to him by everyone here
Next week is the Dinner at the Five Bells and it’s 7:30pm for 8:00pm and no starting the dinner till I have every plate photographed lol