Congratulations to our winners of our photo contest. I will soon put the contest entries on the homepage slideshow. Thanks to Pat Mingarelli for judging our photos. There was a lot of cropping suggestions given. Though he gave technical suggestions, he also gave some positive things we could do to make our photos better. Thanks Pat. Keep in mind judging is also a subjective endeavor.

Nature Conservancy Global Photo Contest Winners

From Tory Ewing

I thought you might like to see this.  I came across a website with the winners of this years Nature Conservancy Global Photo Contest.  Some of the photos are almost as good as the ones from our photo contest.

https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/photo-contest/2021-winners/

October 21 Meeting Minutes

Fontenelle Forest Photo Club Meeting minutes

Agenda items

1. Welcome by President Phil Mininni. He appreciates all of our members but some decisions he makes may not appeal to all but he is here for everyone. Example is having a live meeting and a zoom meeting. He cannot do both so if no volunteers to help assist then he makes the final decision.

New members: Mary Headley and Visitor Kyle Sorys (but will probably join)

Treasurers report by Kathleen: Reminder to pay dues tonight was given if you hadn’t already. Amount in Treasury is: $1655.

Per Brent there are no new website updates.

2. Donna Gray will fill in for Judy Dye in collecting photos for display as well as bringing old ones for members to pick up. Always check the table to make sure you have none to pick up. You may submit more than one photo of the same topic. We used to not have enough for a good display, but now we do so after a few weeks up of one batch then another batch will go up so all have a turn at their photo being displayed. The ones displayed at the forest have to have something to do with nature and the ones displayed at the Bellevue Library do not.
3. Donna introduced our judge Pat Mingarelli who went over all of the photos and announced the winners. The winners will be posted on our website.

Congratulations to everyone that won and thanks to all that submitted their photos. We had 96 photos submitted.

4. Thank you to Tory Ewing and Margaret Block-West for bringing treats.
5. The Treat list was passed around for members to sign up as a few spots were remaining. We still need two members to bring treats on Thursday June 16^th which hopefully we will be back at Bellevue University for the photo contest. We also need one more person for Thursday March 17^th.

Please just another reminder to bring items that are individually wrapped or you have placed in a baggie or wrapped in saran wrap (still because of Covid 19). Please no popcorn as too hard to clean up if on the carpet.

A reminder that it’s your turn will be emailed to you about a week before the meeting. (If I don’t forget-Sorry Tory and Margaret).

6. Member list passed around to be filled out with member contact information:

Again, if you were not in attendance or will not be in attendance for awhile because of Covid 19 concerns, please email the webmaster at Webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org ASAP your information (name, address, email, phone and yes or no if you will accept text messages) so we can verify your information and make any corrections. Thank you.

7. Update with Diane Kinney and Lorraine Feldhausen on compiling a 10-question survey for our members to complete through Monkey Survey. Should be ready to send out within the next two weeks.
8. There will be a meeting set up with the forest to go over issues with our website.
9. It is still undecided if we are to have our Christmas Pot Luck for our December meeting. We may add that as a question on the Survey.
10. For the November meeting, we have invited Aaron Frey back from Rockbrook Camera to bring some cameras and other equipment and talk about whatever we’d like. If our members have any suggestions, please let the webmaster know.

Submitted by Club Secretary: Sue Mininni

Fontenelle Forest Photography Club – Annual Financial Report 2021

Balance September, 2020 $1296.95

Income from dues $464.00

Expenses $429.79

2020 Contest ; judge, 75.00, treats 12.00
Microphone: 42.79
Donation to FF Raptor Team; $300.00

Balance August, 2021 $1331.16


*Because our contest schedule has been delayed, the ribbons and judge
expenses for 2021 Occurred in Sept.

Zoom Meetings

Kyle Sorys has volunteered to set up his camera equipment to do Zoom meetings for us. He and I are going to do a trial rehearsal to see if it will work out. And if it does we will Zoom our November meeting. Kyle was a visitor at our October 21 meeting. He plans to join our club.

December 16 Meeting

Our December meeting is normally a “Bring a Dish” event and the club provides usually fried chicken. We did not have one last year because of the Wuhan virus. This year it was suggested we have a regular meeting without the food. Another member ask why not both. So I will be sending out a questionnaire via email to our members through Kathleen;

Vote for one:

1. Bring a Dish. Food night
2. No food, hold regular meeting. Find guest speaker
3. Do the food and also hold regular meeting

Free Photo Editing Programs

If you do not wish to subscribe to Adobe for Photoshop, here are some free editing programs to look in to.

Top 5. 7 Minutes long.

Thursday at 7:00 PM, October 21, 2021

Just a reminder that our photo contest critique and awards will be presented. Our judge is Pat Mingarelli. You will be able to move your chair as far away or as close as you want to the person of your choice. Mask are optional at this time.

Member’s Choice

Don’t forget to vote for your favorite photo from contest entries. Email the number of the photo you like the most. This vote tally is for members only. I do not know if we have a very large internet presence for a public vote. Click on the link http://www.fontenelleforestphotoclub.org/members-choice/ . Donna is taking votes till October 18, 2021. Email Donna . Do not use the comment section below to vote your choice. Please comment on any other topic or item.

Dues

Dues will be collected by Kathleen if you haven’t already paid.

A Camera Records Light

Lorraine Feldhausen sends this;

I have two photography places that send me emails. This is not a direct quote from one of the lessons, but it gets the idea across:

A camera records light.  What you choose to focus on in that light becomes your picture.

I am attaching two pictures.One was taken on one of the many cloudy days we have had recently.Today I waited until the sun sifted through a tree and landed on this blossom that opened a day or two ago.  Same autumn crocus (different blossom). But the light makes all the difference in the world for color, tone, and mood.The crocus is actually a light lavender. So the second photo is closer to what my eye saw.

This might be something to share at a meeting. Perhaps we could get club members to share different examples of things they have learned like this.

It could be a baby step to getting more involved.

Lorraine

Thanks Lorraine for the input and suggestion.

Kathleen Crawford-Rose

Reports that they have put up the Forest photos up at Fontenelle Forest. There were so many photos that they will be split, half now and the other half later will be displayed.

Monkey Survey

Lorraine Feldhausen and Diane Kinney are working on putting together an on-line survey on Monkey Survey. This is the first time these young ladies have attempted to do this with Monkey Survey. Thank you to Lorraine and Diane. A list of questions will be posted that members can vote on. I believe we will have a password to allow, club members only, access to the survey. I want to get a feel from you where we should go as a club.

I’m sure I probably forgot something

Video on Lighting

Since Lorraine brought it up. About 7 minutes long.

Please comment below

Top of the Website home page

Some of you may not be familiar with our website. The website is at http://www.fontenelleforestphotoclub.org/

Then click on Members Choice “see image above” or click on this link http://www.fontenelleforestphotoclub.org/members-choice/ .

You will see the 2021 contest entries and they are labeled by a number.

Submit your choice to Donna by October 18, 2021

Email Donna at djg618@yahoo.com with the number of the photo you choose as your choice. Vote for only one photo.

Next Photo Club meeting is October 21, 2021

Photo contest winners will be announced and our photos will be critiqued by our judge, Pat Mingarelli

I have generated a new page called “Members Choice” We have a ribbon for the winner of our Member’s Choice award. This page is where you can view the 2021 photo contest entries. There are 92 photos to look at. Please email our contest coordinator with your vote by the number on the photo at the bottom of the photo. Each member gets one vote. Email Donna .

Donna Gray

I misplaced Donna’s photos for our September meeting slide show. I cannot apologize more for screwing that up. Below are her photos.

Minutes from September 16 meeting

Fontenelle Forest Photo Club Meeting minutes

Agenda items

1. Welcome by President Phil Mininni

No new members. He explained the website and how you can have your own folder/page with your photos to show off if you’d like. There is a comment section also. Go to “Blog” section for past posts.

2. Treasurers report by Kathleen: Dues owed tonight. Amount in Treasury is: $1331.16

Kathleen also said we are scheduled for another Raptor shoot in May.

3. Judy Dye brought in old Photos to be picked up. “Pink” photos are on display at the Bellevue Library and “Fontenelle Forest” photos will be put up at the forest.
4. Donna spoke about Photo contest: She is in the process of resizing the photos that have been sent to her and sending them to the judge as she gets them. Our October meeting is when they will be critiqued and winners announced. Next year we will be back on schedule with the contest entries received in May and winners announced in June.
5. Treat list was passed around for members to sign up

Still missing a few spots that need to be filled in. Will pass around again at the next meeting. Please remember to bring items that are individually wrapped or you have placed in a baggie or wrapped in saran wrap (still because of Covid 19). Please no popcorn as too hard to clean up if on the carpet.

6. Member list passed around to be filled out with member contact information:

If you were not in attendance or will not be in attendance for awhile because of Covid 19 concerns, please email the webmaster at Webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org ASAP your information (name, address, email, phone and yes or no if you will accept text messages) so we can verify your information and make any corrections. Thank you.

7. Phil discussed to Zoom or not to Zoom our meetings.

Pro’s: No risk to you as you are at your home.

Con’s: Lousy internet connection at the Forest and none at all if we meet at Camp Brewster.

Hearing questions from the member audience is not clear or loud enough for the Zoom audience unless we run a mike to each person speaking.

Need one or two volunteers to help Phil as he cannot run the meeting in person as well as monitor the Zoom meeting.

8. It was suggested we compile a 10-question survey for our members to complete through Monkey Survey. Diane Kinney and Lorraine Feldhausen will create this survey and send it to all members.
9. Also, it was suggested we have a mentoring program or a list of those that would be willing to mentor a member or members if they feel they have a particular photography talent that would benefit our members.
10. Ended the meeting with a slide show of photos that members sent in of some of their proud photo moments of the summer or just photos they liked.

Need more treat commitments

We will be sending the sign-up sheet at October meeting. We have a few months that need to be filled in.

Acrylic VS. Metal prints

Don’t forget to bring your Forest Photos to the meeting on September 16.

Masks are optional

We will be accepting dues at the meeting

A sign-up sheet will be passed around for treats.

Treasurer report for Sept. Balance is $1,331.16

Another sign-up sheet will be passed around to get member’s latest and correct email address. There will be room to add optional info such as telephone #, addresses…etc.

Time will be set aside to discuss where does the club go from here.

I will go over our website

Slideshow for September 16 meeting

You still have time to send in your favorite “Summer” photos to the Webmaster . Send me 3-4 photos. If the files are too large to email all at once, then send one photo at a time. If still too large then go into your photo editor to reduce the size. If you are not familiar on how to do this, I recommend using WeTransfer . It is very simple to use. This is a free FTP service and allows you to upload up to 2 Gb files. If you have a problem using this site, let me know.

Photo Contest

Time is up for submitting contest photos. Last day was Sunday, September 12. Good luck to all of our members who have submitted entries. Donna reports final count is 96 photos submitted. Thanks to Donna for her hard work and organization.

Melissa Groo Bird Photography course

Kathleen sent us a notification about this course. Discount offer expires September 19

Click on Melissa

Cell Phone Photography

Here is a short video about using your cell phone to take pictures.

Our next meeting is on Thursday September 16. I tried to get a couple of interested speakers to present something for this night. Unfortunately their schedules were full up that evening. They want to present something to the club. I will schedule with them for something in the new year. Sooooo, let’s do a summer slideshow presentation. Send 3-4 photos of your best summer pictures. Send to webmaster your summer pictures. Short notice yes, but because of your President’s procrastination, I do what I can in spite of his poor habits. I will put your photos on a thumb drive and when put on the big screen, we ask that you tell us something about the picture.

Dues will be due at the meeting. Kathleen will take your money and give you a receipt if needed. $12 dollars for membership. $20 dollars for the family.

The Fontenelle Forest display photos will be collected at the meeting.

The September meeting will not have a Zoom call due to previous discussions on technical difficulties. The board had a rambunctious meeting about “to be or not to be Zoomed ” I would like to get our members involved with helping out by educating themselves about how to Zoom and perhaps be willing to take on the responsibilities of being cameraman, audio and video technician and getting us the ability to hold Zoom meetings at the same time as our in-person meetings are being held. Another option could be to record the meeting and put it on YouTube for later viewing.

We will open the floor for discussion on where do we go from here as far as a club goes.

Large files

Some of you have had difficulty sending large .jpg files on their email programs. As cameras are more advanced the file size of photos are much larger. You can go to settings in your camera and change the resolution sizes of pictures taken. This may not be what you want to do if you want to maximize the photo for post processing. If you do post process then you can do a “save as” and adjust the size of the photo for sending via email.

Sending photos one at a time might be the easiest way to send them via email. Still if the file is too large your email program will let you know. If this happens, process the photo to make smaller or select a function that your program will adjust photo for the web.

Another way is to save your photo to the cloud, using FTP protocols such as google drive and link that file in your email allowing the recipient to download the photo. A member did that for some of her Forest display photos. Another way is using WeTransfer.com site to upload your photos and send an email with link via their site to recipient. FileZilla is another site for transferring files. There will be a learning curve on using these avenues. There are a lot of Youtube videos showing how to use FTP programs. You may have to watch more than once to get the feel of it.

Our member’s technical skills run the whole spectrum. Mine seem to be going in reverse the older I get. I will help with your file transfers if I can.

Speaking of Forest and Pink photos

I have received photos for our Pink and Forest displays. I have posted them on the website’s homepage. I could use some more Pink photos. Judy Dye’s team have already put up Pink photos at the Bellevue Library. There are 16 or 17 photos on display. I have only received 8 photos for Pink to be put on the website. Please send your Pink photos to the webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org.

We are collecting your forest photos at the September 16 meeting. Please bring them. If you have photos and plan not to attend the September 16 meeting let us know and Judy and her team will try to accommodate you.

Photo Contest

Have you sent your photos into Donna? Donna says;

Please send her your photos in full size files after processing.  I will resize them to the judge’s specifics.

I am getting some small-ish files.  Depending on the size of the files, and whatever email servers require, the photos may have to be sent one or two at a time.

Thank you.

Donna

You have till the 12th of September to get your photos in to her. Pat Mingarelli is our judge and he will critique our photos and announce the winners at our October 21 meeting. I will get, from Donna, the photo files after winners are announced and post them on the website.

Winning photo contests, a judge’s perspective

The video below is only 20 minutes long and may not be pertinent with our present contest. But there is some insight on what the judges look at for determining a winning photo.

COMMENT BELOW

Please comment below your thoughts below about anything presented in this posting. Hope to see all of you at the September meeting. I am sure I forgot something and will be reminded of it. I will post more next week prior to the meeting with updates, corrections, and good info!

Phil

Correction to initial post for Displays.

You are receiving this information now so that you have plenty of time to take and decide which photos you want to enter in this year’s digital contest.  The contest date for submission of photos will be September 1 – 12, 2021.  Please do not submit anything before that date.  The critique and awards will follow during the regular October meeting date.

Thanks Donna for correcting me!

I hope everyone’s summer has been fun. With the heat I am ready for fall. I want to remind everyone to get their photos ready for the photo contest. We plan to have our photos critiqued by our judge at the October 21 meeting. Information and rules for the contest can be found at the link Contest . No Zoom call at this time.

Bellevue Library

The Bellevue Library is now showing our photos. Judy’s team put them up on July 21. “Pink” is the theme. I hope you all can go take a look at these photos. Very nice!

I would like to change the slideshow on our homepage. Those of you who have submitted photos for the “Pink” theme, would you also email me the files for your photos. Email to webmaster .

Fontenelle Forest

We are assigning a summer project (Forest theme) to our members. We want you to come to the forest and take photos anywhere in the forest. Anything goes! Take flora, fauna or landscapes. Go abstract if you like. You can submit older photos you may have already of the forest. We will collect your pictures at the September 16, 2021 club meeting. I would like our members who submit forest photos for our display at the forest to email me your photo files. Send them to webmaster . I will add them to the homepage slideshow along with the “Pink” photos.

Woodland Photography

Here is a video with 5 tips for taking picture in the forest!

FONTENELLE FOREST PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB MINUTES

JUNE 17, 2021 7pm

Meeting called to order by President Phil Mininni.

No new members.

Phil asked what we as members would like to see on our webpage or things we don’t want on there. Email him at Webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org for any suggestions.

Our Vice President, Kathy Holm lost her husband, Larry “Mike” Holm, on June 10^th and Kathleen sent her a sympathy card on behalf of the Club Members.

This was an in-person meeting at Camp Brewster. Doing Zoom for this meeting was not possible as there is no internet connection. Phil attempted to record this meeting on his laptop but was not successful. He will try to figure it out before we meet again in September. Part of the problem was the equipment that the forest had or didn’t have.

Our Secretary Eric Scholar was absent, so Sue Mininni filled in to take minutes. There were no additions or corrections to the last meetings minutes.

Per our Treasurer Kathleen there is $1295 in the Treasure. A $300 donation was made last month to the Raptor Program for them to buy frozen rats to feed the raptors.

Photos for our display at the Forest will continue to be Water as we had a lot to put up. The next display will be pictures with pink in them that had been previously collected. It was also suggested that the members get out and explore the murals all over town and then we have a display of those in the future.

Donna Gray was not there to speak on the upcoming Photo Contest. The contest date for submission of photos will be September 1 – 12, 2021. Please do not submit anything before that date. The critique and awards will follow during the regular October meeting date. We do not have a judge yet.

We had our annual election of club board members. The new officers are as follows:

President: Phil Mininni

Vice president: Kathy Holm

Treasurer: Kathleen Crawford-Rose

Secretary: Sue Mininni

Photo display (Judy and Frank Dye), photo contest (Donna Gray), and webmasters (Phil Mininni and Brent Headley) are voluntary positions.

We can also accept “members at large” that basically volunteer to help out the officers/club with various tasks throughout the year. We would appreciate more of you getting involved when you can.

As members we ask that you pick a month to provide treats for one of our meetings. We have 8 months for treats to be brought as the first month is provided by the club and then we have our Christmas dinner (hopefully this year) so no sign up for that month other than bringing something for the dinner. We like to have two members per meeting bring something and there will be a signup sheet at the September meeting and Sue will send out reminders per email to you when it is your time. Because we don’t know where we will still be at with Covid rules it is best the treats are individually wrapped items (cookies, etc.) or store-bought wrapped candy items or made-up snack bags. Be creative. We will let you know if things change. Soda and water are provided by the club.

Pat Mingarelli was our guest speaker. He is a past member of our club. His talk was on the national parks. He did a wonderful job even though we had no overhead projector. Phil will post on the website a link to his Power Point Presentation.

Submitted by: Sue Mininni

As a reminder about submissions of photos for the contest, we also don’t want any photos after the 12th of September. Contest rules link .

Steve Carson says hi!

Steve recently left the club after he retired. He moved to Montrose, CO. He says he still takes pictures. This picture he took after a short drive from his home. Nice. That picture was taken from a road between Montrose and Naturita, CO.

We miss you Steve.

Phone Photography

We we elected club officers at the June 17th meeting;

President – Phil Mininni

Vice-President – Kathy Holm

Treasurer – Kathleen Crawford-Rose

Secretary – Sue Mininni

I want to thank Eric Scholar for being the Secretary for the last 5 years. I asked for the members who would be willing to take on the job of secretary, to step forward. Everyone except Sue stepped back. Congratulations to all of those elected and re-elected. Thank you for your continued support to the club.

Pat Mingarelli

I was disappointed and disillusioned when the digital projector would not work for Pat Mingarelli’s presentation. The lighting was terrible for recording video. My attempt to record the meeting failed miserably. No WiFi to even try the Zoom meeting. The main problem was the projector’s incapability to see any video coming from Pat’s computer. It seems the digital projector is not new enough for the new and improved computer’s HDMI outputs. Even with adapters that Pat had that should have worked, didn’t. Pat said his equipment was working fine the last time he gave a presentation. The club has its own projector and I didn’t even think of bringing it as a backup. For that I am sorry.

For those of you who attend the meeting I have Pat’s Power Point file below that can be downloaded and viewed. No audio accompanies this. Those of you who were there will remember what he was talking about when you view the slides. He also has more slides at the end of his presentation then he got to due to time constraints. For those who did not attend missed a great discussion even if we had to get in real close to look at Pat’s laptop. The file is safe. If you get a warning from your computer, go ahead and download the file.

Thoughts

Like I mentioned before due to technical problems, our meeting was not 100% successful. It is extremely difficult to be in charge of the meeting and to perform technical “kind of things” at the same time. I have to consider my options for next year. For my part trying to record the meeting, the back light coming through the windows was too much for my camera. At home the camera and window’s app worked great. We messed around till past 7 PM trying to get the projector to work. I don’t necessarily blame the forest. I will communicate with our liaison about the inherent problems with Camp Brewster. I take full responsibility and beg for your indulgence.

Our Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be September 16, 2021. Dues will be collected. A speaker has yet to be determined. Our October 21st meeting will be centered around the photo contest where we will get critiques of our photo entries by our judge. Award ribbons will be given out also. You can link to the contest rules here, Rules . They can also be accessed from the website home page at the top next to Home. Just remember the submittal dates are September 1-12th.

Please comment below or email webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org with comments or suggestions on anything pertaining to the club. I will try to address all of your concerns. I will even try to rationalize my methods of madness.

HDR vid-6 minutes