A word from the Chairman

In case you're wondering,  we haven't had any volunteers to join the committee at our AGM in April, or even anyone coming to ask more about the roles so now is your chance. We need someone to fill the role of either chair or treasurer as Vince has said he will take over as chair if someone else steps takes over a secretary. The treasurer role is fairly self explanatory and takes minimal amount of time. David Hardy has established and been the programme sub-committee chair this year. At the AGM he will revert to competition secretary so there is a vacancy as chair of the sub committee. As a reminder, each member of this group organises two speakers for the following season. They have plenty of time to do this as booking speakers is mainly done in Jan to Mar for the next season. So by the time you join the programme sub-committee hopefully most of the speakers for 25/26 will be inplace giving plenty of time to settle into the role and research possible speakers.

Approaching and persuading people is not my forte, so please step forward to fill these roles or persuade your friends to volunteer. Don't be shy! 

Last week's meeting was our first get together at the club of the interest groups. There was lots of discussion going on and we week arrange a similar session in the future.  This was preceded and followed by active trading in the bring and buy sale, I for one came away with more than I took.  Special thanks to all those who donated some or all of their takings to the club. Chris Hills then followed with an excellent talk on his photographic journey in infra red photography from the use of filters, camera conversion and a photoshop shortcut. The talk was illustrated with great images,  with some demonstrating the normal view, in camera ir images and the post processed version.

Next week we will not be meeting at the Conservative Club but will meet virtually over Zoom. Members will be sent an email with the login details over the weekend. The speaker is Stephanie Johnson and she will talk on 'ICM Photography'. Stephanie is very accomplished in ICM and is the founder of ICM photography magazine.

Programme changes. The first round of the Cheadle alliance is on Monday 3rd Feb at Bramhall not 3rd March.  Please put this in your diary and come along to support the club. For those members wanting to attend here are the details

Cheadle Alliance 2025 Round 1   February 3rd 2025  at Bramhall PS, Village Club Lumb Lane Bramhall. SK7 1LR  at 7.45pm.  open from 7pm 

 Judge Nick Berentzen.

On Feb 18th, we will be holding a photo editing challenge. Before Feb 8th, we will send the the same two or three images Google Drive to everyone. You can then download these, edit them in your own particular way and upload the results to Photoentry.  The different approaches will then be discussed at the Feb 18th meeting.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Zoom, so don’t turn up at the club!  The speaker is Stephanie Johnson  talking about ICM Artistry & Creative Expression. ICM is ‘In Camera Movement’.  Stephanie is the Founder & Publisher of ICM Photography Magazine, and will be speaking to us from Iowa, where it will probably be a lot colder than here in Cheshire. 

Project Group

The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday 4th February 2025.  For that event, the following themes were chosen:-

1. Tree Triptych.  In the photo club world the usual triptych is a set of 3 associated images presented as a single print or, as in our case as a single DPI. It therefore becomes both a photographic and processing challenge. The trees can be whole or parts and up to about 6 DPIs will be acceptable.  (many Olympus cameras can produce 3 images on one frame in camera, no doubt others can as well as some phones with apps?)

And/or 

2. Feet.  (or did Phil mean feat???)  Is this too easy or not?  Let us see how your imagination can be stretched to create some stand out images……….. 

As usual the idea of this Group is to give you a purpose to take some fresh images on your camera and perhaps learn new photographic and processing skills. Put your own interpretation on the theme and create a presentation to last up to about 5 minutes.  

As it is not a competition there is no need to specially size your images and remember to put them on a memory stick which contains nothing else but one folder for each theme that you are entering.

Questions and suggestions are welcome. 

Bill Salkeld