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.