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.
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.
