Merry Christmas to all! I want to thank you for all your words of encouragement and kindness. There are a lot of patient people in our club. I enjoy being your president and webmaster. I am always learning new things and hope to continue learning and keeping the little grey cells active. Sue and I are retired and love taking pictures and sharing them.

December Meeting

I must say our all Zoom meeting went fairly well. A couple of people did not receive an invite. We are working to correct this. For the January 21st meeting I will post a reminder on the website that will state, “If you don’t receive an invite by the Monday before the Thursday meeting, send an email to the webmaster . I will see to it that you will get one. We don’t want to publish the details of an invite on the website. Because of possible spammers, hackers, or undesirables interfering with the meeting.

Some people had poor connections to the meeting. It seemed to be some of those members living in the Fontenelle Hills.

Once again we had some beautiful photos submitted. The slideshow, with a few hiccups, went well. I am working on putting these photos on the homepage as a slideshow. I am putting our contest photos in their own portfolio, soon to be published.

Thoughts for January 21, 2021 meeting.

I got the vibes from some of you that a subject matter for January’s meeting would be preferred on basic Photoshop or Lightroom. Zoom meetings make this a perfect venue. I need a volunteer who is willing to share their screen and go over some of the basics. I am not an expert. If you have experience with these programs, your club needs you. It doesn’t have to be really in depth. Showing some of the adjustments that are doable in PS or LR would be a good start. Please contact me, webmaster . I have included a short Photoshop video below.

DO Space has regular “Photoshop for beginners’ webinars. Check out their website and search. They will post to Facebook the webinar.

From our guest in California

Thanks for letting me attend your meeting last night – it was fun!  From my experience so far attending photo club meetings across the country your 15-16 participants is just about the ideal number – large enough to get diversity of opinions and photographic styles but small enough to be friendly and supportive. One meeting with somewhere around 60 participants addressed this by breaking out into small sub-groups for the meet and greet at the beginning and then got back together as a whole for the presentation.  I enjoyed seeing your photographs – my favorite was the coyote, nicely set off against the green background.  You mentioned that judges often suggest cropping – I can understand that because it matches my experience when we critique our members’ photos.  The moon and balloons photo, I thought, could be stronger as a panorama, losing some of the sky at the top and bottom.  Some of the clubs I visited do their critiques in Lightroom so that suggested changes in aspect ratio, contrast, saturation, or whatever can be tried out in real time.  It was pointed out by one club that for in-person meetings we are all looking at the same photograph, whether it be a print, projected image, or tv image, but on Zoom each of us is looking at a slightly different version depending on the quality or calibration of our monitor.  I couldn’t believe how many bald eagles are in your area – a couple of our members who specialize in nature photography would consider that Heaven.  Your mention of Big Boy got my attention (I assume you were talking about that BIG locomotive).  I love train photography, but unfortunately we don’t have any trains around here. 

– Tom Raymondson

Eagles at Loess Bluffs

From Kathleen Crawford-Rose

The Sunday World Herald midlands section has an article and photos of Many EAGLES at Loess Bluffs.  Photo by club member, Linda Schuett, on the front page!

Way to go Linda!

Short Video on Photoshop

We are going to have a first for our club on December 17. It will be an all Zoom meeting. It will be a Zoom only meeting for the next three meetings. I do hope it will be less complicated than when we tried to do the in person plus Zoom meetings at the same time. Kathleen is sending an invite to all members. No need to RSVP at this time.

If you are not familiar with how to participate I recommend you go back to the previous post . At the end of the post is a YouTube video on a Zoom tutorial.

Christmas Slide Show 2020

I could still use some more photos from our members. I know everyone is really busy this time of year. Take a few minutes and pick out some of your photos you have and would like to show off and share. I am making title pages of the members who have sent in their photos for the slide show. This takes a little bit of time to do. I have been able to keep up because I haven’t been swamped with submissions. Our meeting is this Thursday and I rather not get the rest of the photos on Thursday morning. Send in your photos to webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org .

Adobe Lightroom for beginners

Do Space is doing a webinar on Lightroom on Monday evening, December 14, at 6:30 PM. Here is a link for the webinar registration. Do Space has a Facebook presence where they have their webinars available. I am not really into FB. So if you are interested check out Do Space for more info.

Do Space

It has been discussed and decided to have our photo club meetings for December 17, January 21, and February 18 as Zoom meetings. I hope we can all meet in person for March’s meeting. We will evaluate circumstances at that time. If you haven’t already downloaded and installed the Zoom app, you will need to. Go to https://zoom.us/

It is a free app and is supposed to be easy to use. Kathleen Crawford-Rose will send an invite to all paid (hint, hint) members. you don’t need to be paid up for December’s meeting. I think it is fair that you will be all paid up for the new year, though.

Contact your webmaster for anymore information or assistance setting up a Zoom account. See the “Learn Zoom” video below.

This will be advantageous in several regards

• Give forest staff a break from having to stay late
• Avoid technical issues with Zoom and in person meetings
• A sense of personal safety from Wuhan virus
• Speakers will not necessarily be needed.
• Members who have moved out of the area could join back in and attend

December 17

Christmas slide show

Open forum

January 21

Fontenelle Forest Photo Club Website

Show the website, explain how to navigate, register, log in.

Open forum

February 18

TBD

Any ideas?

Christmas Slide Show

People have started sending me their photos for the slide show. Try to limit number to 3 to 4 photos. 1500 pixels on the long side. Subject is “Anything Goes” Email mail me your photos to webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org

Learn Zoom

December 17 is our next meeting. I don’t have a speaker as yet. I do want our members to send to the webmaster 3 to 4 photos of your choosing. We will do a slide show and the subject is “Anything Goes”. Limit your pixel size to 1500 pixels on the long side. You can start sending now to ME .

Judy needs your Vine photos!

Bring your vine photos for the displays. I think they will go the the Bellevue Library.

Zoom meeting for December 17

We will attempt to do another zoom meeting. I will have our digital projector at the forest for those that come in person and will share the photos from a laptop. I will minimize audio to avoid feedback and echo issues. Please keep in mind we are not professionals . Could you guess?

Trying to do a live meeting with members who attend the forest meetings and zoom participants make it more difficult to coordinate all the variables that occur during the meetings. I am viewing Zoom “how to” videos to get a better understanding. So far I haven’t found a tutorial that addresses this problem.

Speaking about audio. We can mute all member’s audio. We can’t un-mute them. Member’s will have the ability to un-mute themselves by pressing their spacebar on their computers. Then they can ask a question or talk about their photos from the slide show. We ask you then to mute your audio by pressing on your spacebar again. You can also do this on your dashboard control bar by clicking on and off the microphone icon on the left end of the dashboard.

Sigma 150-600mm lens

Here is short video about the Sigma telephoto lens. It is the impressions of the photographer that are interesting.

Minutes of the Fontenelle Forest Photo Club November 17, 2020 Meeting

About 17 people attended and 7 additional members attended via zoom

President Phil Mininni, Presiding

PHOTO DISPLAYS:

Judy Dye:

Vine photos are the next category due.

Treasurers Report:

Kathleen : There is $1297 in the club’s treasury . $75.00 was spent for the photo contest judge

Annual dues are due!!!!

The program for tonight will be a presentation by Aaron Frey of Rockbrook Camera on the latest in photography equipment (as well as some other equipment):

Aaron mentioned that Rockbrook camera is now located only at 168^th and Center at the Legacy Shopping Center. He spent a lot of time on Mirror-less Cameras which are now featured at the store. He mentioned that these cameras are lighter weight with a smaller camera size, faster and have more tools than previous cameras. They are fully weather sealed and are now available in full frame. Some have face detection and animal eye detection. He specifically talked about the Nikon Z series and the Canon EOS-R. Either is available in the $1000-1500 price range. He mentioned that new lens mounts are available for these cameras and the lens available for them are very sharp and fast. Both Nikon and Canon have built-in stabilization into the camera body. He also mentioned the Sony mirror-less cameras that are available in full frame and that they are very compact. He then talked about some of the new lens available including the Sigma and Tamron 600mm lens that are reasonably priced. He finished by talking about a new video camera and new tripods available at the store. To finish he also talked about a couple of new camera bags now available as well as new Led lights and memory cards available.

Thanks to Linda Schuett and Linnea Baney for bringing treats tonite.

The meeting was adjourned at about 8 P.M.

Submitted by Eric Scholar, Secretary.

Additional minutes info:

There were no volunteers to take up the Vice President position. Kathleen told me she and the other officers would be able to handle a meeting when the president could not attend

President Phil is working on a December speaker

Christmas slide show for the December Meeting. “anything goes” will be the subject. There will be another post with details for submission.

No Potluck dinner for December meeting.

Phil is going through user’s and subscriber’s list on the website to get rid of spammers. Many are no longer viable e-mail addresses.

Thanks to Kathleen for picking up a bottle of sanitizer. It was also convenient that the forest had tables set up with little bottles of sanitizer. I thought that it was a more comfortable meeting with tables to sit at!

Thanks to Brent Headley for monitoring the Zoom call. he let me know when the “BRAND NEW MICROPHONE” audio quit.