After our summer break, the PSSCC had a great start to the season at our monthly meeting in Federal Way. For those not able to attend, here’s a (very) brief summary of the discussions and events.

Club Business

Don Munsil, club president and host-extraordinaire, started the meeting with show-and-tell. He brought several items from his extensive collection of 3D stuff, including:

  • The Wonders of the Stereoscope, by John Jones (view on Amazon)
  • 3D Grand Trumps Tarot Deck, by Davide Corsi (view on Amazon)
  • An Album of Stereographs, by  William Culp Darrah and Richard Russack (view on Amazon)
  • A cool, high-resolution (1080+) phone by Oppo

Don also re-booted the clubs tradition of distributing prizes for the photo contest winners. (Thanks Don!) Included in the vast treasure-trove are:

Food

We spent a good amount of time discussing our tradition of providing lunch during the meetings, and the logistics, costs and equitable distribution of responsibility. Various ways of encouraging volunteer participation for bringing food were kicked around, and in the end, it was decided that we’d try to move forward with the new online food sign-up list on the website. Even before the conversation was finished, members of the club were seen signing up for next month via their cellphones.

Finances

From food, we moved on to money. Our new Treasurer gave a brief summary of our financial situation, which is actually pretty good. In brief, we have money in the bank and most of our members have paid their dues for this year. We discussed the pros and cons of paying for the room through June of this year, and the possibility that the club might move it’s meeting venue to somewhere closer the bulk our members, in the Seattle or Eastside areas. Moving would require the formation of a committee to investigate and evaluate alternate locations. The idea was tabled for the time-being. In the end, it seemed everyone agreed that reserving the room through June was a good idea, since moving would take a while to sort out.

The idea of a contingency fund to cover wear and tear on the slideshow equipment was also discussed. Most people were surprised to find out that each of the bulbs in our projectors cost about $300, and replacing them would be a significant challenge for our small bank account. That lead to some brainstorming about how to capitalize on the value of the club’s library of 3D artifacts and magazines that have been received as part of our participation in various photography clubs. Don volunteered to begin sorting through the boxes, one by one, and bringing them into the club to sell to help raise funds for our contingency fund.

Photo Competition

After lunch, we sat down to view our “What I Did Last Summer” photo competition. Our winners were:

  1. Bob Venezia’s fireworks image “Majestic Burst”.
  2. David Brown’s “Spider”.
  3. Shannon Milner’s “Boat”

The winning photos and artist statements have been posted on the competition winners page.

Exploring 3D

After our competition, Don shared some 3D demo reels from LG and Samsung created to showcase their 3D TVs. We also examined how photos from a rotating product display can be assembled into stereo images by pairing sequential images as left/right pairs. We also looked at many images taken over the summer by club members, and had an informative mini-workshop about how to reduce ghosting in high-contrast photos by adjusting the horizontal positioning of the pairs.

Looking Ahead

Next month our club competition theme is “Patterns”.

In addition, next month you can bring your entries for the ISC Competition.