Puget Sound Stereo Camera Club

Meeting Announcement – February 2019

PSSCC Members and Friends,

Whoa Nelly!! What a bunch of snow!! As I write this, there are eight inches of winter wonder piled up in my backyard, and it’s still coming down. I hope someone is brave enough to capture some of this in 3D for next week.

Which reminds me, our February meeting is coming up next week. It seems early this month just because the way the weekends fall, but next Saturday will be the third Saturday of the month. I trust the weather will be better then, but keep on the lookout. If the meeting had been scheduled for today, we’d have to cancel. We’ll reassess the weather as the weekend gets closer. Watch this space for cancellation notices. Hopefully the region will be snow-free by next weekend.

Which reminds me that I need to remind everyone that we’re looking for great images of our region for the NSA slideshow advertising our 2020 convention here. As Phyllis announced at our last meeting, the convention will be held at the Hotel Murano in Tacoma August 10-17, 2020. We are planning trips to Rainier, Seattle Center, the fish toss at Pike Place Market, Chihuly Garden and Glass at Seattle Center, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, America’s Car Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum. Any more ideas? Please share them at the meeting next week.

Which reminds me, next week our regular contest theme will be “Night” which is one of my favorite themes of the year. I’m looking forward to this contest. Night shots offer terrific opportunities for creativity and experimentation. And novelty is spice of life…

Which reminds me: Food! Let’s bring some yummies! Here’s the sign up sheet.

Stay safe and warm this week. We’ll see you all next week.
David

By David Brown|February 9th, 2019|Club Meetings|Comments Off

January Meeting Announcement

PSSCC Members and Friends,

Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season is treating you well.

Our next meeting is coming up on this Saturday. As you know, this is the first meeting where we meet on the THIRD Saturday of the month. We’ll continue meeting on the third Saturday through June. We’ll take a summer break in July and August and then meet on the the third Saturday in September and October. In November and December we’ll meet on the second Saturday to avoid conflicts with the holidays.

This month our club contest theme is Reflections. This is a theme very well suited to 3D photography so I think we’ll see some of our best stuff this time. I’m really looking forward to it.

Our lunch potluck in December was a great success. Thanks to everyone for bringing so many delicious treats. This month we’re back to our regular volunteer sign up list. You can sign up to bring a thing on this page: http://psscc.org/food-sign-up/

In quick news, I’ve had some success with an outreach effort I made at the the Shoreline Community College. I’ll be working on a one-hour presentation on 3D photography for their Photography Department’s spring quarter classes. I’ll share more details this Saturday, and I’ll be asking for suggestions as well.

Our Facebook page got some interest in the past few weeks. Sadly, I wasn’t watching it closely and didn’t realize that I had to APPROVE new members. Hmmm… I’ll try to watch more closely, but I don’t really spend much time on Facebook anymore. Are there any Facebook fans out there that might want to help moderate the page?

See y’all soon!

By David Brown|January 14th, 2019|Uncategorized|Comments Off

September Meeting Notes

In case you couldn’t make it to our September meeting, here’s a quick recap of the important news:

Phyllis Maslin announced that the club had committed to hosting the 2020 NSA National Convention. Phyllis and Greg Perez have been laying some groundwork and, while nothing is settled yet, it appears the convention will be held in Tacoma which is more affordable, has good facilities for conventions, and has plenty of local interest right downtown. The dates are also not firmed up, but will probably be in July or August, 2020. During this year, our club will be expected to put together a stereo presentation of photo highlights of the area to show at the 2019 NSA convention to advertise. Also, start thinking about some local destinations that would be good for tours.
Brian Hogan is once again collecting dues for the this season. Please bring cash or check for $30 to the next meeting, or reach out to Brian directly to make arrangements.
Our first meeting in our new Kirkland location was pretty good. The room is just big enough, the chairs are comfy, and with our new blackout shades, it’s plenty dark. The kitchen is also great. However, it’s a little hard to find the room, so if you haven’t been yet, I recommend parking on State Street. Look for the playground equipment. We’re in the ground floor room right next to the playground. Most of our regular team came, but despite a strong interest on Meetup.com, we didn’t have any Meetup folks show up. Maybe next time.
Special congrats to Stewart Turley who swept 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in our September photo contest. Great images!
We spent some time at the end of the meeting looking at Adobe Lightroom and how it can be helpful working with stereo images. Next time, in October, Stewart has volunteered to give us a demo of On1 software which is his preferred tool.
Next month, our photo contest theme will be Abstract. Also in October is the first of our three annual ISCC contests. Bring your best stuff! We’ll be picking six images to submit for judging in the national contest. Please note that this year (finally) ISCC image size has changed to the more standard 1920x1080x2. I haven’t updated the details on the website yet, but I will before our next meeting.

By David Brown|September 12th, 2018|Club Business, Club Meetings|Comments Off

Big Changes for PSSCC

Well, another season begins next weekend! Oh my goodness! I’m sorry for the late announcement, but summer got away from us and we had some genuine work to do to get ready for this year, so we’re a little late getting the word out.

This is going to be a historic season for us, and one of the most interesting seasons for a long time. Gone is our familiar old home in Federal Way, but this year will bring us a whole new range of opportunities.

New contest themes
New meeting content
New meeting location
New meeting schedule
New outreach opportunities

Contest Themes

Let’s start with our contest themes (listed also on our website contest page). These themes were suggested by our members and voted on in our June meeting, last season. There are some challenging themes here, so start planning ahead.

September: Summer Share / Open
October: Abstract
November: Perspective
December: Cha Cha
January: Reflections
February: Night
March: Culture
April: Series (3-7 sequential images)
May: Nature
June: Open

New Location

After at least two years of discussion on the issue, we’ve finally made the move to a location closer to Seattle. It’s still not in Seattle, but we hope it’s close enough to attract some additional members.

Meetings will be held at Northlake Unitarian Universalist Church, located at 308 4th Ave S, Kirkland, WA 98033.

Here’s a Google Maps link: https://goo.gl/maps/YBu3h32jMBs

Here’s a link to the church floorplan: http://northlakeuu.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Northlake-Rental-Map.jpg

We’re in Adams Hall (the big one in the center).

Parking is easy in the church lot. Just take the stairs down to the lower level, beneath the main church hall. For anyone with mobility concerns, we suggest you park on State St. to avoid stairs.

New Schedule

For the remainder of 2018 we’ll continue to meet on the SECOND SATURDAY of the month. Then, beginning in January 2019, we’ll meet on the THIRD SATURDAY of the month.

Here’s the proposed schedule at this point:

September 8, 2018
October 13, 2018
November 10, 2018
December 8, 2018
January 19, 2019
February 16, 2019
March 16, 2019
April 20, 2019
May 18, 2019
June 15, 2019
July – Summer break, no meeting
August – Summer break, no meeting

I’d like to suggest some possible adjustments or additions to this schedule to include some evening meetings later in the season in order to try to do some outreach to other clubs, but we can discuss that more during our meetings.

New Outreach

Speaking of outreach, we’re live with Meetup now. See our profile page here: https://www.meetup.com/Puget-Sound-Stereo-Camera-Club/ Please sign up for Meetup (free) and join our PSSCC group there. The Meetup profile was announced to photo enthusiasts throughout the region today (8/27) and after only a few hours we already have 7 members signed up as interested. Only two of those are current club members. They may not all come, but Meetup seems to be working pretty well so far!

The Meetup membership costs us $10 a month. That allows us to advertise our club meetings and show some information about the club. The first 6 months are 50% off, so we’ve only paid $30 so far. Our club meeting is then visible to anyone in the region looking for photography related events.

New Meeting Content

At our June meeting we agreed we’d like to see more educational information as a regular part of our meeting agenda. Some of the ideas suggested were:

Workshopping Images (each member can bring one image to solicit feedback from the group)
Software demos for StereoPhoto Maker, Photoshop, OnOne, Lightroom, and Magix Movie Edit Pro.
Editing examples to show before/after techniques, and how to get more “oomph” out of your images.

We don’t have a schedule yet for our educational programs for the season, but I have always wanted to show the club how Lightroom can be used effectively for 3D photo editing. I’ll put something together for our September meeting. Hopefully in September we can get some additional programs scheduled, at least for the next couple of meetings. If you’d like to volunteer to show us a trick, tip or technique, we’d all like to hear about it.

Workshops/Critiques: Personally, I’d love to see a workshopping discussion as part of every meeting. If you have an image that you’d like to get feedback on, bring it along. We can discuss possible technical and/or aesthetic improvements.

I hope you all got a chance to take some interesting photos over the break, and chalked up a few good stories to tell too. I’m looking forward to the familiar faces, but I expect new ones to be a regular occurrence for us from now on, and our content should keep that in mind. We should be prepared to cover some basics in every meeting.

See you all very soon.

By David Brown|August 27th, 2018|Club Meetings|Comments Off

June 2018 Meeting Announcement and Updates

We’ve made it through another season, almost. Next weekend is our final meeting before our summer break. Our June meeting is when we do our annual potluck. That means we all bring something, with no particular organization, and we get to eat whatever shows up! Bring chips, drinks, casserole, salad, whatever you like. Bring enough to share with roughly eight people.

Our photo contest theme in June is alway the “Open” category, so this is the time to bring something new, or odd, or otherwise. I’ve got a handful of pics that I’ve taken this year that just didn’t fit into the earlier categories, so now is the time.

Next Season’s Themes

As we discussed in our meeting last time, we’ll spend some time selecting categories for next season’s contests. We have 10 meetings a year and two of those, September and June, are always “Open” so that leaves eight categories to choose. Shannon, as usual, has provided a list to get us started but this time we’d like to solicit ideas from everyone. Either email me your ideas in response to this message, or bring them with you to the June meeting. We’ll put up all the ideas and we’ll pick our favorites together.

Here are Shannon’s suggestions:

Flowers
Signs
Farmers market
Textures
Barns, churches and bridges
Rustic, vintage, antique
Journalistic
Buildings

For reference, there’s a record of our themes for the last 5 years on the website.

http://psscc.org/competition-themes/

Also, in case you need some inspiration, here’s a list of 328 contest theme ideas on another website:

https://photographyicon.com/photography-themes/

Personally, I like the idea of picking themes that aren’t object-specific. I like themes that are more artistic, like “negative space” or “monotone” or “isolated color” or “abstract patterns” or something like that.

Additional Club Topics

It has been suggested that we focus more on sharing techniques, strategies, software tips, and other ways to help us all become better 3D photographers. I love this idea because while there are plenty of tips and tools on the Internet for better photography, our particular love of 3D is what brings us together and, as you know if you searched, there just isn’t much online for how to take better 3D photos. While I love the idea of sitting back and watching someone else tell me how to make better photos, that puts some pressure on someone to step up and give that presentation.

I spent some time looking up how other clubs organize their meetings. I wanted to see how other clubs run their contests, how they judge, what they focus on in their meetings, and their level of organization (or lack of it). I’d say PSSCC is not the least organized, but we’ve got some room for improvement. I have some screenshots I took from other clubs’ websites. I’d like to share those at this month’s meeting then spend a little time talking about what people want from our of our club, and how to make that happen. Most of us have years of experience taking photos in our own special way, and we have developed a certain way of crafting our images. Some have experience selecting and improving photo gear, or years of experience building proficiency with some software package or another. I think each of us has some deep well of experience that would be a welcome topic of discussion with the rest of our club members. But in order to share, someone has to do the sharing. If we can agree on what we want out of our club, it’s my hope that we have members that can step up and share something valuable in that regard. If we can do this on a regular basis, we’ll be a much stronger club.

Location Search

Earlier this month I reached out to a handful of locations requesting information about renting their facilities. I made a little progress, but most places didn’t even respond. The one place that responded enthusiastically was in West Seattle. It’s a narrow, clean room with few windows, it’s central-ish, and it’s available during our current timeslot on Saturdays. The rate for non-profit organizations is $25/hr. The rate for non-registered or for-profit groups is $50/hr. This would require us to become a non-profit organization, and as we’ve discussed there are other advantages to us to do that anyway. (That’s a whole different conversation.) They have a bathroom sink, but they don’t have a kitchen. They don’t have a problem with us bringing in food, but we need to clean and sweep after every meeting. Basically, we need to leave it in clean condition every time, but that’s not new for us. We’ll talk about this and other options in our June meeting.

See you all soon!

By David Brown|June 8th, 2018|Uncategorized|Comments Off

March Meeting Wrap Up

Our March meeting was another outstanding showing with a lot of good images in our contest (Opposites) and a lot of additional work shown besides. A special shout out to Rabih Aboujaoude, our long lost member who wandered to New Mexico and got stuck. 🙂 Rabih won first place in our Opposites contest and landed two second place images besides (in our multi-way tie for second place.)

The slide show of work from David Hagan was also a big hit. If you missed our meeting, you owe it to yourself to see his work on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dddhazan/albums His collection of over 1100 outstanding images is an inspiration. His work is all in anaglyph format, so grab a pair of red/cyan glasses and go explore.

Here’s one more thing worth sharing, an article on creating depth in art and photography with cues other than stereoscopic perception. https://zevendesign.com/creating-depth-art-photography

Next month we have an interesting topic for our contest: Superstitions. Wow, that will be interesting.

See you then.

By David Brown|March 14th, 2018|Club Meetings|Comments Off

Just some thoughts about 3D Perception and VR

A very smart friend of mine sent me a passage about the limits of stereoscopic vision from a book he’s reading, Visual Thinking for Design, by Colin Ware (book link).

Some depth cues are not captured in a static image, and are therefore not pictorial. One kind of depth cue comes from the fact that humans, like many other animals, have two front-facing eyes. Visual area 1 contains specialized mechanisms for using the small differences in the images in the two eyes to extract distance information; this ability is called stereoscopic depth perception.
Different depth cues have different uses depending on the tasks we are trying to perform. Stereoscopic vision is optimal for visually guiding our hands as we reach for nearby objects. It works best in making judgments of the relative distances of nearby objects, within a meter or two of our heads. Stereoscopic depth judgments are also most precise for objects that are at nearly the same depth. The brain is not good at using stereo information to judge large relative distances. Because of these properties, people who have little or no stereo depth perception (20 percent of the population) still have no difficulty driving cars or walking around, although they will be clumsy when trying to thread needles.
Stereo technology has, for the most part, been a story of fads that faded, and this is largely because of a failure to understand that the main virtue of stereo vision is the precise guidance of hand movements. The Victorians were fascinated with stereo photos and sold thousands of stereo images. Now they clutter the stands of flea markets. Stereo cameras had a heyday in the 1930s and 1940s but now are almost unobtainable. Many inventors and entrepreneurs have lost their shirts on stereographic movies and television systems. The problem is that none of these technologies allowed for manual interaction with the visual three-dimensional objects that were represented. If we had virtual three-dimensional environments that allowed us to reach in and move things, then we would appreciate stereo technology more. [p. 94, emphasis added]

While I may disagree with some of his particular points (“clutter the stands of flea markets?” Oh, really? Where??!), I think his conclusion is basically correct. We can see stereoscopic depth at a distance, but our brains are really geared to use it best at arm’s length.

That in turn made me remember a delightful (but somewhat jarring) new VR game I saw advertised this week called Beat Saber. Here’s an article about the game, but you can get the idea of the game pretty quickly from this YouTube video.

Here’s a video showing actual game play from the perspective of the player.

This is an outstanding use of 3D in that arm’s length zone, or pretty close. I’d love to try this game, even if I’m terrible at it. It’s like the Dance Dance Revolution of the VR world.

-David

By David Brown|January 22nd, 2018|Technology|Comments Off

December Meeting Announcement

I hope everyone enjoyed a happy Thanksgiving last week. The holidays are upon us, as is the stormy weather. I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors these days, and much of it on my computer working on my image editing skills. I’m learning Adobe Lightroom, and practicing a new technique called Exposure Blending. As soon as I’m good enough at either of them I’ll share some info with the club.

However, before we get to that, I want to give a little update on what hasn’t happened regarding our move out of Federal Way. I’ve made a connection with the Seattle Photographic Society, and I’m getting closer to getting some details about that nice church in north Ballard with the full basement and the kitchen. However, there’s not much to share yet. Thanksgiving week sort of got in the way, but I hope to have specific details for our next club meeting.

And, speaking of club meetings, this is one of those months when the second Saturday comes before you know it. It’s on Dec 9th, which is only two weeks away. Our PSSCC photo contest theme: Events. And of course: Food Sign Up (you know the drill).

Just for convenience, here are the contest themes for this year:

2017-2018 Contest Themes

September: What I did last summer
October: Demonstrations
November: Doors, knobs and windows
December: Events
January: Letters
February: Neon signs
March: Opposites
April: Superstitions
May: Round/Circles
June: Open Theme

We don’t pick for the ISCC this month, but according to our website information we should be planning to do that in January, so keep it in mind.

To anyone not able to join us in December, have a wonderful holiday season. See you next time.

Happy Holidays,
Hope to see you on December 9th.

By David Brown|November 26th, 2017|Club Meetings|Comments Off

November Meeting Announcement

Heads Up! Next weekend is our monthly meeting.

This month our club contest theme is “Doors, Knobs, and Windows” which is a pretty rich topic with lots of options.

This month our club lunch theme is food. Everyone likes food! Here’s a link to the food sign-up page to volunteer to bring a thing: http://psscc.org/food-sign-up/

At our last meeting we had a good conversation about moving to a new location closer to Seattle. We’ll spend more time talking about a move at this month’s meeting as well. Don Munsil is heading up the research, and anyone with ideas or suggestions is welcome to share.

This month, I did a little research myself and looked up photography clubs on MeetUp.com. I attended one of the photography club meetings that’s advertised on that site, and I learned a number of things. First, MeetUp.com is a good place to publicise our club in order to attract new members. The club organizers at the event I attended said they regularly get new members through that site. I started creating a profile for our club but stopped when I got to the costs: $10/month. That is a good investment if it brings in a few new members a year, but I thought we might want to wait till we get to our new location to consider it. Anyone who finds us through that site may not be interested if we’re too far from Seattle. On the other hand, if we’re close to where they live, it might be a disappointment if we plan on moving away soon. It can wait till we settle on a place. Secondly, I learned that there are a lot of active photography clubs, and they’re all meeting somewhere. So it’s a rich source of ideas for venues if we find we’re still looking. Those same photo clubs are also a good place for us to do outreach by doing a 3D photo demo as part of their regular club meeting. We could get new members that way too.

As my work schedule starts to get under control, I’ve had a little extra free time lately. Once again I’ve been looking into ways to share our photos online easily. I still haven’t found an easy way to display our photos attractively, with proper attribution, in a format that’s usable by everyone, without a lot of manual intervention. The page I started for our contest winners proved to be just too time consuming for me to keep up with. But I still would like to show off our work somehow. I’m still looking for a solution, but there’s one thing I can do that’s pretty easy. I can create a Club Member Links page that links to our members’ online photo sites. If you use Flickr or 500px or some other sharing site, and you want to add a link to your online photos on our PSSCC site, just send me a link to your page and I’ll add it. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a manageable solution for everyone, including those who may not use photo sharing websites.

The weather this weekend promises to be snowy and cold. Take care everyone! We’ll see you next week.

By David Brown|November 4th, 2017|Club Meetings|Comments Off

October Meeting Announcement

At our October meeting on 10/14/17 we’ll have several items of business.

1) ISCC Contest

PSSCC will be selecting entries for the first round of the ISCC competition at our October meeting. We will need 6 entries with no more than 2 entries per person. The format for the images is the same as last year:

Each stereo Image for the PSA-ISCC should be a single image file consisting of the stereo pair with the left image on the left side and the right image on the right side. Image width (horizontal) of each individual image should be exactly 1400 pixels and the height (vertical) should be 1050 pixels, resulting in a combined image file width (horizontal) of 2800 pixels and an image height (vertical) of 1050 pixels. Where the image is not to an exact 4:3 format, image centered black banding is to be used to convert the image to the required 2 x 1400 x 1050 format.

This can be most easily achieved with the StereoPhotomaker “resize” tool in the “Edit” menu option. Select the “Keep Aspect-ratio with border” button and, in the two boxes type 1400 for X and 1050 for Y.
Select the Resample option if it is not already checked and hit OK. Save your image with a new name so that you do not over-write the original.

There is no limit on the size (in megabytes) of the files, so do not use a lot of compression when saving the JPEG image.

2) Moving Meeting Venue

Last month we began talking in earnest about moving the club meeting location closer to the Seattle metro area. Don has a candidate for a new location in Kirkland that looks to be promising: the Kirkland Congregational Church (google map) (church website). We’ll want to talk about the timing and make sure we have general consensus regarding a move.

3) PSSCC Photo Contest

Of course, we’ll have our monthly photo contest. This month the theme is: Demonstrations.

AND…

Of course, we’ll have lunch. Sign up here to volunteer to bring a thing.

By David Brown|October 6th, 2017|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Schedule Chanages – March and April, 2017

In our February meeting, we discussed some necessary schedule changes. Please make a note of the following:

1) Our March meeting will start at 12:30 pm and run till 3:30 pm. There’s an event in the Senior Center facility and it’s unlikely to be cleared out in time, so we’re pushing back just half an hour.

2) Our April meeting will be on the THIRD Saturday this time, rather than the second Saturday. The new date for our club meeting (April only) is April 15th at the regular time.

By David Brown|February 19th, 2017|Uncategorized|Comments Off

2016-2017 Season Begins September 10

Our 2016-2017 meeting schedule begins on Saturday, September 10. Our first photo contest theme will be “Summer Share” as we normally do for our first meeting after the summer break. We’ll discuss contest themes for the rest of the year at our first meeting.

By David Brown|September 5th, 2016|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Photo Blogs, VR and Free Tools

In the last few months of meetings and announcements some websites and tools have been mentioned. Here’s a quick post to provide references for anyone who’s interested.

Digital Photography School

Before we start, here’s a new one that I’d like to share. This blog/newsletter offers pretty inspiring tips for the aspiring photographer. He’s eager to sell his classes and books, but what he gives away for free is pretty good. Link: http://digital-photography-school.com/tips

Google Nik

Google has a set of photo filters that they just made available for free called Nik. They used to cost about $150, but they just decided to give them away. Be warned, it’s a big download (~500MB). I’ve been using them in Photoshop, but there may be other ways to work with them. Check it out here: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/

Google Cardboard (VR)

Back in February Don showed us some of his VR (virtual reality) viewers. One of the software applications that Don mentioned was Jaunt VR (website: http://www.jauntvr.com) which allows you to use your phone to view VR. You’ll need a VR headset viewer such as Google Cardboard or similar units. Look online for inexpensive units. Here’s a place to start: https://www.google.com/search?gs_ivs=1&q=Google+cardboard+viewers

That’s all for now.

By David Brown|April 17th, 2016|Uncategorized|Comments Off

January Meeting Wrap-Up

Before we get to the January wrap-up, remember that our February club meeting is on Feb 13, the day before Valentine’s day.

In our January meeting, we had some technical difficulties (Stuart wasn’t there) so we couldn’t get our voting software working. As a result, for our next club photo competition in February, we’ll have a combined contest theme of Food / Nature.

We also had a frank conversation about the food situation. Marilyn and Joyce have been managing the significant effort for providing, organizing and cleaning up our monthly buffet. There are a few things that they’d like to request.

We need more volunteers to bring food. It generally falls to the same people, month after month.
Please don’t call Marilyn or Joyce to check on the food status. Please check the website to see what’s needed. Note that you can now sign-up AND cancel on the sign-up list. The sign up list automatically notifies our food coordinators whenever there’s a change on the list, and will automatically send you an email reminder the day before the event. You can also sign up months in advance. Nevertheless, if you sign-up and later can’t provide food for some reason, please make an effort to find someone to take your place. We all agreed that if there are gaps on the sign-up sheet, there will be gaps on the lunch table. No one should be expected to fill the gaps at the last minute.
Joyce requested occasional assistance with driving food to the meeting during bad weather. She’s in the North Seattle area. Please write Joyce directly if you’re willing to help in this respect.
It was also requested that our newsletter/meeting reminder/email be sent two weeks ahead of the meeting requesting food volunteers, and that a second reminder be sent one week ahead of the meeting to point out any gaps in the menu.

Food Reminder: Please sign up to bring food. ? Here’s the link to the sign up page.

We also addressed our meeting location. It was suggested that a more convenient location would help existing members come more often, and might even bring in new members. Don said he’d check out a church venue in Kirkland, but any change wouldn’t happen until our next club season (2016-2017) because we’ve committed to the Federal Way Senior Center. I have also sent email inquiries to two Seattle-area churches that rent space to other photo clubs, but have yet to get a response from either.

Don showed us some of his VR (virtual reality) viewers. One of the software applications that Don mentioned was Jaunt VR which allows you to use your phone to view VR. You’ll need a VR headset viewer such as Google Cardboard or similar units. Look online for inexpensive units.

Spring will be in the air next month, and we’ll all start to get that itch to be outdoors more often. But for now, it’s still cold and wet, which is perfect weather to work on your photo submissions for “Food / Nature” for February 13.

See you then.

By David Brown|February 7th, 2016|Uncategorized|Comments Off

September Meeting Wrap-Up

PSSCC Members and Friends,

Our season opener was eventful. Here’s a brief summary of what happened.

Don Munsil treated us to a quick review of his summer trip to Scotland. He told us about an exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland in Edenborough called Photography: A Victorian Sensation that featured a great deal of stereoscopic photography. In addition, he told us about the Swiss precision drum team at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo called the Top Secret Drum Corps.

Don’s book reviews included a German paperback about the Kaiser Panorama, and 3D Berlin (sorry, no link). His new disk acquisitions include The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet (Amazon disk and filmmaker interview) from the same guy that gave us Delicatessen and Amalie. He also pointed out the wide variety of 3D BluRay disks with David Attenborough available through Amazon.co.uk. Phyllis Maslin introduced us to a special disk called 3D Rarities that was featured at this year’s NSA convention in Salt Lake City.

We started collecting club dues for PSSCC ($30/year). If you missed the September meeting, you can catch up at next month’s meeting.

Joan Story told us that she’s preparing to move into a new house, and decided to sell her husband’s collection of cameras. Her husband Joe, who passed a few years ago, was an avid photographer and collected cameras for many years. Joan and Joe have been long-time members and supporters of PSSCC, and she felt Joe would have liked to see the proceeds of the sale come to PSSCC. Joan graciously presented the club with a check for $4,000 to help support the club and to improve our 3D experience. Thank you Joan (and Joe) for this very generous gift! In future meetings we’ll discuss ways we can use the donation most effectively.

PSSCC_ISS_1stPlace_2015 Last year, our humble Puget Sound Stereo Camera Club won first place in the Photographic Society of America’s International Stereo Club Competition. This month, we got a chance to see the certificate in glorious 4D right in front of our own eyes! For those of you who missed it, here’s a 3D representation >>

We saw clips from some of the disks that Don and Phyllis discussed, including a 1940’s 3D promotional featurette about the Pennsylvania Keystone Railroad, a clip from the BBC’s National History Museum Alive about archaeopteryx, and a great selection of 3D images from the Best of Stereoscopy group on Flickr. Next year’s NSA 3D-Con convention is in Tulsa, and we saw a promotional film put out by the event organizers that highlighted the photogenic side of Tulsa, including a surprising amount of Art Deco architecture.

Stuart Turley gave a live demonstration of how to use StereoPhotoMaker to remove the distortion we often see in photos of tall, vertical structures. Stuart agreed to write up the process to include in the “How To” section of our website.

It was a great meeting and a great start to our 2015-2016 season.

See you in October, when our monthly contest theme will be Orange.

By David Brown|September 13th, 2015|Club Meetings|Comments Off

September Meeting Announcement

Here we go! Let’s kick off our 2015-2016 Season!! I hope everyone had a wonderful break and took lots of pictures.

Our first meeting of the season is next Saturday at 12:00 PM at the Federal Way Senior Center.

As is our tradition, September’s photo contest theme is “Summer Share Out” where we show off what we did over the summer.

Our monthly themes for this year will be:

September – Summer share out
October – Anything in the color orange
November – Jack-o’-lanterns
December – Sparkles
January – Food
February – Nature
March – Industrial
April – Contrast
May – Transportation (no cars)
June – Open

Thanks again to Shannon Milner for providing the list.

Sadly, there’s still no way to add photos to the website easily and quickly. Since our pics have special display requirements (L-R-L format for full-size viewing and non-3D versions for thumbnails), I haven’t had time to go back and rename, resize and reformat each of the contest winners and place them on the site individually. Social media sites make sharing photos easy, in particular Flickr which is the most popular, and Phereo which makes displaying 3D photos very easy. But since we chose as a group not to post on these sites, I have to stop promising that I’ll eventually catch up and put our contest winners on our own website. Sorry. I feel bad about it, but I’m a lot busier now than I was when I started this project.

On a lighter note, I’ve upgraded the food sign-up list this year to make it easier to track the status of lunch items each month. You’ll now get a confirmation email when you sign up, an automatic reminder the day before, and the option to un-volunteer if something comes up preventing you from bringing food to a particular meeting. Hopefully, this will make it a little easier to sign up, and maybe even to sign up further in advance. Our valiant lunch coordinators will also get automatic notifications when someone signs up or removes themselves from the list.

Finally, I’d like to encourage everyone to try to introduce at least one additional person to the club this year. We are the advocates for 3D photography in the Puget Sound region. There must we ways we can reach out and bring more people into this extraordinary hobby. At least drag a guest to a meeting. THEY may know someone.

See you on Saturday!

By David Brown|September 6th, 2015|Club Business|Comments Off

June Meeting Announcement

This Saturday, June 13 will be our final meeting for the 2014-2015 season. Be sure to come see the best of the best for the year. This month’s photo competition theme is “Open” so you can select anything you want. Bring your best work of the year, if not to compete, then just to share.

Also, there’s no food sign-up sheet this month. It’s our annual potluck, so everyone brings something to share. As a general rule, we suggest you bring enough to feed eight.

See you there!

By David Brown|June 11th, 2015|Club Business|Comments Off

The blue sky and white clouds are playing tag, the birds are calling, the trees are in bloom, and the warm sun on our faces reminds us that it’s a loving world after all. There couldn’t be a better time to huddle in the dark and look at photos of the great outdoors!

Next weekend is our April meeting. Our club photo contest is “Plants” and I KNOW you’ve got pictures of plants, so bring ’em and show ’em.

Food!

It’s Spring and you know what that means! It means you want lunch on Saturday. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been relying heavily on Joyce, Marilyn and their support teams (‘husbands’) to make sure we’re fed. They spend a lot of time managing the tiny details, presenting a buffet, and cleaning up after us. We owe them more than thanks. We owe them a debt. Their efforts turn our slideshows into events. On behalf of the whole club, let me say how grateful I am for all that you do. We can help support them by making sure that that they don’t have to BUY the food as well. Bring some stuff. Here’s the sign-up page.

We’ve also got our ISC contest this month, so Bob Venezia asked me to pass along this message:

It’s March Madness in April. This is our equivalent of the NCAA final four!

The final International Stereo Club Competition (ISCC) of the season will be held in May. We will need to pick our entries at the April meeting. Currently we are in First Place! Should we have a good showing in May, we have a very good shot at the top spot.

Why are we doing so well? We hosted the ISCC in November. If this were bowling, that would be like bowling a strike. Strikes are good, but to really capitalize on them you need to do well in both of the next 2 frames. We did great in the first frame after the strike. Now there’s one more to go, and it is our time to shine.

Bring your favorite 3D images to the meeting. The rules are:

Must have originated as a photograph taken by you.

Must not have previously won an award in the ISCC (but if your image has been chosen previously to represent the club, and it did not win a ribbon, your image may be re-entered).

The specifications are that the image should be a parallel pair, side by side with dimensions of 2800×1050 pixels (1400×1050 for each side). If your photo does not meet that spec, Bob will reformat it for you before sending it into the competition.

Website updates:

As of right now, the hacker’s have been vanquished, and the website is back up. The club’s steering committee has agreed to spend $40 to pay for some additional security software for the site. Let’s hope it’s enough.

I haven’t yet found an effective way to add photos to the site. I’ve got copies of all the winners for this past season, but putting them on the site without the support of social media sites is a time-consuming process, and time is a luxury I don’t have right now. Please be patient till I find a way to manage the photos. A photo club site without photos is not what I intended, for sure. I’m working on it.

See you this weekend.

David

By David Brown|April 4th, 2015|Club Business, Uncategorized|Comments Off

March Meeting Announcement

T march-meeting-announcement his month, our photo contest is “Love” which, for the record, excludes selfies with your photo equipment! Bring your loveliest pics to share and show off. We’d all love to see them.

Elliott Swanson has posted images on Flickr of his trip to Harry Potter World. See them here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/85452191@N00/

See ya’ll in March.

By David Brown|March 1st, 2015|Club Business, Uncategorized|Comments Off

Mont Saint-Michel

Long-time club member Elliott Swanson sent us some images of Mont Saint-Michel for our club to view in January. Elliott couldn’t be there with us then due to his hectic, globe-trotting schedule. However he did forward me a link to the photos on Flickr to share with everyone.

See his 3D photos of Mont Saint-Michele. Also, see a Google Maps view of the area.

By David Brown|February 28th, 2015|Uncategorized|Comments Off

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