Puget Sound Stereo Camera Club

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

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

Our December club meeting was one of the most enjoyable meetings I’ve attended in a long time. I’m not sure why, but the combination of photos, videos and conversation struck me as particularly rewarding. It reminded me just how great it is to be part of a group such as ours. Thanks to everyone for the creativity, the hard work, and the easy smiles.

I wanted to remind everyone who was there, and inform anyone who missed the meeting, that we discussed in broad terms what our club policy should be regarding posting our 3D contest winners on the Internet. Presumably this policy would apply to any other photos that are given to me with the intention of publishing on the website. I’ve drafted an official sounding policy that I’d like to get comments on before we post it as truly official on our official website 🙂

PSSCC Photo Publication (Draft) Policy:

Photos submitted to PSSCC photo contests may be published on our club website, psscc.org, unless the artist specifically requests that they not be published.
Artist’s publishing preferences may be submitted on an individual photo basis or as a blanket policy covering all photos submitted by the artist. It is the artist’s responsibility to ensure his/her intentions are understood by PSSCC club members and volunteers responsible for publication.
Photos will not be published on any other public forum (including, but not limited to social media and photo sharing sites) without the express permission of the artist on a photo-by-photo basis.
PSSCC club members and volunteers will make a best efforts attempt to comply with all artists’ wishes, and artists agree to indemnify PSSCC club members and volunteers for any perceived or monetary damages in case of any failure to comply with any stated or unstated publishing preferences.
Submitting images for PSSCC photo contests implies understanding and consent to the club’s publishing policy.
PSSCC’s publishing policy takes effect January 1, 2015.

January Meeting Reminders

Date: Our January meeting is next Saturday, on January 10.

Contests: We’ll have TWO contests next month:

Our PSSCC monthly contest theme is: Decorations.
Our ISCC contest is also this month, and Bob Venezia asked me to pass along the following info:
February will be the next edition of the International Stereo Club Competition and so this month we will need to pick our entries. Bring your best photos that have not previously gotten awards in the competition.
The photos should be parallel format (two images joined together into one file with the left image on the left and the right image on the right). Each of the left and right component images should be 1400×1050 pixels, with the resulting file being 2800×1050. File weight should not exceed 2.5 MB per image. JPEGs and PNGs are acceptable.
For more granular specifics, please refer to:http://psscc.org/iscc-competion/
and good luck!!!

Food: Do you miss the food-craziness of the holidays? Me too! Let’s bring some yummy stuff to our club meeting! The sign-up sheet is ready and waiting for you.

See you next weekend!

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

December Meeting Announcement

Next weekend we gather once again to give thanks… I mean… to show off our photos. : )

Next Saturday our club photo contest theme is “Fairy Tales” and I’m sure you all have great photos of Fairies and of Tales, and of the Tails on Fairies, and such… so bring ’em, show ’em and win big, BIG prizes!

I’m going to bring a Google Cardboard Virtual Reality viewer that i got in the mail this week. Sadly, it’s not compatible with my phone, but if anyone with an Android phone wants to give it a try, you can download the Google Cardboard app from the Play store and try my viewer on Saturday.

At the meeting I’d like to take a minute to talk about our publishing policy regarding photos submitted for competition at our club contests. It’s never been stated explicitly that photos submitted for our private viewing are authorized to be published on the web. We should talk about it as a group, and determine an acceptable policy.

You may have noticed that the PSSCC.org website is pretty out of date. I had some trouble with WordPress, but that’s fixed now! Now, if I could just keep up with the content!

And finally, no meeting reminder would be complete without an exhortation to BRING FOOD! Get your tummy in shape for holiday excess by bringing a big bunch of something delicious to share. See the sign-up page to stake your claim on a food category.

See ya soon!

David

By David Brown|December 6th, 2014|Club Business|Comments Off

PSSCC September Meeting Notes

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:

Pixi 3D Viewers and Lite 3D Viewers from Loreo
Lens cleaners of various types, from key-chain style to pen style.

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:

Bob Venezia’s fireworks image “Majestic Burst”.
David Brown’s “Spider”.
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.

By David Brown|September 15th, 2013|Club Business|Comments Off

PSSCC Membership Dues

With the beginning of the 2013-2014 season, it’s time to remind everyone to pay up. Annual membership to PSSCC is only $20 (what a bargain!)

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Last Year 🙁

In the 2012-2013 season, we came up short on membership dues. Only about half our active members remembered to contribute. If you failed to contribute last year, and you want to catch up, you can slip a Twenty to our new Treasurer, Brian Hogan at our next meeting.

By David Brown|June 16th, 2013|Club Business|Comments Off