I hope everyone is well, had a great Christmas and your celebrations weren’t affected by Covid. With the rise of the Omicron variant, I realise that people may be less comfortable with meeting in the Guild.  Fortunately, the programme this year has been designed for more online content in Jan/Feb if necessary and the first few meetings will be available online.

Next meeting 5th Jan – Interclub competition

The entries are in for this four way competition between ourselves, Knutsford, Manitoba and South Winnipeg.  This will be held over Zoom to allow as many Knutsford and Canadian members to attend. For logistical reasons, there will not be a meeting in the Guild for this on the 5th January.

If you haven’t received the zoom link via email by 3rd Jan, please check your junk mail thoroughly and then let me know. It’s better not to leave this till the 5th Jan as I’m unlikely to have time to respond between finishing work and joining the meeting.

Following this, the meetings on the 12th and 19th Jan, these will be available to everyone via Zoom.  If people want to attend in the Guild on these dates, please let me know and we will see this can be arranged.  If I don’t hear from you, I will assume that there isn’t any interest.

Competitions & Judges

We’ve cleaned and adjusted the projector in the guild and hopefully,  images will now project ok. Please bear in mind that the judges do get to view the images at home before the judging so will have seen them on a calibrated monitor.

Whilst I’m on the subject of judges and compeitions, there is always discussion about how judges comment and how to reduce their criticism. I found this judging special newsletter on the PAGB website interesting although I’m not sure I’ve put any of it into practice yet!

52 week project and other ideas

Mary is running the 52 week project this year. If you wish to join in, please get in touch with her.  It’s a relaxed group and the sharing and discussion of images is via a separate Whatsapp group.  Also, many of the photo sites on the web are full of projects for the year.  Here are a few on the ephotozine website.  These are a great way to keep your motivation up, particularly at the moment.

Exhibitions

For those of you interesting in entering the Southport Exhibition, the deadline is 14th January. More information can be found here.

The Smethwick International exhibition is judged between the 8th and 16th January. You can book online at their website if you wish to join the judging and the prints can be viewed free of charge on their website from the 8th Jan