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

The Fontenelle Forest Photo Club is having its monthly meeting at Camp Brewster on June 17, 2021 at 7:00 PM. The forest has another event that conflicts with our schedule. Thus, Camp Brewster. There is a link to a map and directions to Camp Brewster under “Upcoming Events” at the bottom of the home page of the website. Don’t forget to mark this on your calendar. Map Link

We are going to have our annual election of club board members. Pat Mingarelli is our guest speaker. His talk will be on the national parks. See below for his bio info. I forgot to mention on a previous post, that the photo contest chair person is Donna Gray, and it is a volunteer position. The same goes for the photo displays at the forest and Bellevue Library. Judy Dye is the driving force for this. It is a also voluntary position.

There is no WiFi at the camp. We are unable to do a concurrent Zoom meeting. The Zoom client requires access to the internet. I have been experimenting with video recording. I plan to record the meeting and upload the video to YouTube and then post the link onto a posting on our website. Wish me luck.

Another loss.

Kathy Holms husband, Larry has passed away. We offer our prayers and condolences to her and her family during this sad and stressful time. Kathy is the club’s vice-president.

Forest photo display

We had too many photos submitted initially to display at the forest. Judy Dye and her crew swapped out 10 photos recently. Be sure to check out the display the next time you are at the forest. Thank you Judy and crew.

Pat Mingarelli

“Pat Mingarelli worked for a newspaper in Ohio before joining the staff of an organizational magazine called Worldwide Challenge. The organization was international, so Pat traveled the world and traveled the country photographing their events, staff and projects. After the 12 years with Worldwide Challenge magazine Pat became a freelance photographer and did work for many other magazines including NebraskaLand and Nebraska Life. His work has also appeared in wildlife magazines and calendars.

Today, Pat primarily works as a real estate/architectural photographer, sports photographer and nature photographer. He resides in Bellevue Nebraska with his wife Patti and their two children, Talitha and Pasquale and their dog Montana”.

2021 Photo Contest

Submit photos September 1-12

There is a page on the website that has the instructions and rules for the contest. Page link .

2 Camera Modes

You should use for 98% of your photos.

I put out the wrong memo for the contest rules. Sorry about that! Below is the correct info with rules and date.

Date: June 14, 2021

To: The Members of the Fontenelle Forest Photography Club

Re: 2021 “DIGITAL” Photo Contest

From: Donna Gray, Contest Coordinator

Bellevue University has enacted numerous new rules for events held at the University due to Covid 19. The Fontenelle Forest Photography Club’s board has decided to have a digital contest again this year because many of these rules make having an in-person event, the set up or the take down process extremely difficult.

***Only Fontenelle Forest Photography Club members who are up to date regarding Club dues are eligible to enter photographs. If you are unsure of your status, check with Club Treasurer Kathleen Crawford Rose.***

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.

We will be using the same rules for categories that were in effect in past years.

“Novice Class”:  This is open to club members who have NOT won a first, second or third place in any individual category, or Overall Show award in prior years’ photography club shows.

“Advanced Class”:  This is open to club members who have won a first, second or third place in any individual category, or an overall show award in the prior years’ photography club shows.

No exceptions for class designation.  If any member new or old feels they belong in the advanced class, they are welcome to enter their photos into this class.

Categories:

• Scenic/Landscape: Continental US, outside continental US, any nature themed image where the focus or subject IS NOT manmade objects, including urban, city, pets, and Humans.  Must be a nature-based photo taken by a club member.

• Animals: Any living creature, wild or domesticated, including pets. Not humans.

• Flora: A photo where the following are the main subject of the photo.  Any flower, plant, fungi or tree.

• Anything Goes: (Combined category – Novice & Advanced) 

Any photograph not meeting the requirements of the 3 categories listed above.   Also, any photo that is over enhanced or un-naturally manipulated will be entered into this category.

Photos may be moved to another class up to the point of judging for awards if the Contest Judge, Photo Contest coordinator or club president feel an entry was categorized incorrectly at check-in.  These contest rules are their guide, and any corrections to classification are final. Members may review the regular Club Contest Rules (print photos) on the Club website.

Members may enter a total of four photos in the contest. The photos may be split up between categories or all in one category.

Please forward your photos to me in jpg (jpeg) format. Don’t worry about file size. I will take care of any resizing that needs to be done. If you don’t know how to convert to a jpg (jpeg) file, just email what you have, and I will convert as needed. If your files are large, you may need to email them one or two at a time due to email restrictions on file sizes.

Please have your photos to me between September 1 through September 12, 2021 . No earlier, no later. Email them to me at djg618@yahoo.com .

There are two ways to let me know the information needed for the contest – depending on the level of your computer skills. If you are not familiar with how to rename a jpg file, simply type the category name, whether you are entering as a Novice or Advanced, the title of the photo and if it was taken at Fontenelle Forest as part of the email. Make sure your name is also included in case it is not part of the email address.

For those who are comfortable renaming files, I have a code that will shorten everything and hopefully, make it easier for you……. and me 🙂 ! After each letter group, put a comma to separate them. And again, please make sure your name is included in the email. If after reading the code, you feel it is too cumbersome, just follow the instructions in the preceding paragraph.

Number – the individual number assigned to each photo entered in the contest

A – Advanced

N – Novice

FL – Flora

SC – Scenic

AN – Animals

ANY – Anything Goes

FF – Taken at Fontenelle Forest

If you are entering a photo of a bird, taken in Fontenelle Forest, and you are a novice photographer…..

Original file name: img_1234.jpg

Contest file name: 53,N,AN,FF,Happy Robin.jpg

Number – the individual number assigned to each contest entry (I will do this.)

First letter – Advanced or Novice Photographer

Second Group – Category – Flora, Scenic, Animals, Anything Goes

Third Group – Taken in Fontenelle Forest (Used only when photo is taken in Fontenelle Forest)

Fourth Group – Title of photo

Awards: 

In each Class and category:   First, Second, and Third Place (18 Ribbons)

Anything Goes Category:  First, Second, and Third Place (Combined Classes) (3 Ribbons)

Overall Show Awards:  Best of Show – all classes, all categories

Club Members Choice – – all classes, all categories

Best Black and White – all classes, all categories

Best Photo Taken at Fontenelle Forest 

Total of 25 Ribbons to be awarded at this Year’s Show

I will be responsible for everything to do with getting your photos to the judge and getting the results. Phil will eventually be putting the photos on the website so everyone can see them. At this point, I do not know how the critique will take place. It will either be via Zoom meeting or possibly in person at Fontenelle Forest, or a combination of these two. It will be decided well before the contest.

Ask questions if you have them and be patient with those of us who are attempting to get it done right!

There is another event at the forest that has bumped, us once again, for our June 17, 2021 meeting. The WiFi signal at Camp Brewster is not very good. I will attempt a Zoom call as well as the in-person meeting. WiFi must be strong enough with adequate bandwidth.The forest may not be able to fix the signal strength in time. We will see!

I have posted the June 17 meeting in the Events/Calendar on the website. There are directions to Camp Brewster as well as a map. I will send out a reminder the closer we get to the 17th.

May Meeting

We had good participation at our May 20th meeting. 24 members attended to take pictures of three raptors shown by the forest’s raptor group. The meeting went very well. It was wonderful to see members again in person. After the the photos were taken the photo club presented, to the forest, a check for $300.00 to be used for food for the raptors. Check out the meeting minutes below.

Pat Mingarelli is our speaker

Pat will be discussing National Parks. For the talk, he will give some background information about the parks and spend probably the majority of his time speaking about how to make the most of one’s photographic excursion to the national parks.

Minutes from May 2021 meeting

Minutes of the Fontenelle Forest Photo Club May 21, 2021.

The meeting started at 6:30 P.M.,24 people attended at Camp Brewster (Note: This is our first in person meeting since the corona virus pandemic started.)

President Phil Mininni, Presiding

Phil: Phil mentioned that the next meeting will also be at Camp Brewster on June 17. At that meeting will be an election of officers

Donna:The photo contest will be held in the fall. It will be a digital contest due to covid restrictions at the usual venue of Bellevue Univ. Updated details for submitting photos will be posted soon on our website.

The program for tonight will be a presentation of 3 raptors by the raptor team at Fontenelle Forest. Members are encouraged to photograph them.The raptors present were a barred owl, a turkey vulture and a peregrine falcon.

The meeting was adjourned at around 7:30

Submitted by Eric Scholar, Secretary.

Election for club officers

We will take nominations and hold elections for the club officers at the June meeting. They are the president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. The other board members are voluntary positions; photo contest, webmasters, photo displays at the forest and Bellevue library and member-at-large.

Lightroom Photo Editing

This video is about 18 minutes long. The presenter is very informative about photo editing. Enjoy!

May 20 Meeting

Reminder;

Greetings Photo Club Members and welcome back to in person meetings.  Our May 20^th meeting will be a raptor shoot in the natural setting of Camp Brewster.  We will plan to start at 6:30 to take advantage of good light.  Phil has included directions on our club website along with more info on the shoot. 

The Fontenelle Forest Raptor Team will bring 3 or 4 of their raptors for us to photograph.

Fontenelle Forest Staff would like a head count of attendees in order to properly set up.  Please RSVP to this message if you plan to attend.  It will be great to see you all in person again.   We will work inside the building if the weather should not cooperate. See previous post “Camp Brewster”

Birders

Kathleen submitted for the Nebraska Bird Review

NEBirders,

It’s time for the 14th annual color issue of the Nebraska Bird Review,
the quarterly journal of the Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union.  We are
requesting good quality bird photos for publication in an upcoming
issue.

This is not a photo contest, but there are rules:

1. Images must be of wild, free-flying birds and must have been taken in
Nebraska, but you may submit photos taken in prior years.

2. Images must be of good quality: sharp focus and high enough
resolution
to look good when printed.  Please do not send low-resolution,
“thumbnail” size images.

3. The subjects don’t need to be rare birds, but images that document
something interesting about a species (behavior, date, nesting, etc.)
are more likely to be selected.

Our special challenge this year is for photos of species with the word
“red” in their common names. Redhead, Red-shouldered Hawk, and
Common Redpoll are all acceptable, as are many other species found in
Nebraska.

The name must contain “red”, used to mean the color red. So Reddish
Egret is acceptable, but Eared Grebe is not.  Conversely, a bird
doesn’t need to LOOK red to qualify. A juvenile Red-headed Woodpecker
has no red on it, but is fine and dandy for the Red Challenge.

And then there are birds like the male Northern Cardinal and Scarlet
Tanager, which are undeniably red, but don’t have “red” in their
names. We’d be happy to have your cardinal and tanager images, but
they won’t work for the Red Challenge.

4. A maximum of 5 images per photographer may be submitted.  Please do
not expect us to look through dozens of photos you have posted on a
website.

5. The following information must be provided with each image:

     SPECIES
     DATE PHOTO WAS TAKEN
     SPECIFIC LOCATION
     COUNTY

6. The final selection of images to be published is solely the decision
of
the NBR editors (see #3).

Please email your images to me at

paseka76@gmail.com

or send me a URL for images posted on a website. If you have a number of
photos posted, please direct me to the specific 5 images you are
submitting
for publication.

Contributors will be credited in the photo captions.

DEADLINE: JULY 31, 2021.

Thanks, and have fun!

Janis Paseka
Ames  NE
Editor, The Nebraska Bird Review

Lightroom Basics

Our next meeting on May 20th will be at Camp Brewster and will start at 6:30 PM. The forest has a scheduling conflict and we lost. Camp Brewster is north of the Fontenelle Forest. I will post a map below.

Raptor Shoot

The forest’s raptor group is going to bring over some birds for us to shoot at the May 20th meeting. The meeting will be one half hour earlier to take advantage of the daylight.  Kathy Fisher will be bring a team with a turkey vulture, a peregrine falcon and a great horned owl, plus a surprise bonus bird.  After  the  photograph session, we’ll have a Q and A  with the handlers and give them our donation toward the bird’s upkeep. The business part of our meeting will be after everyone has gotten their fill of pictures. If weather is an issue, we can take photos inside the building.

No Zoom Call

Our May 20th meeting will be an in person meeting and the subject matter is raptor photography. Having a Zoom call is not logical in this instance.

Photographing Birds of Prey

Camp Brewster Map

From our April 15 Zoom meeting we recorded part of the meeting. When I realized I could not record the meeting without host permission we were past the business part of meeting. Kathleen could not find the button to push allowing someone else to record. So she recorded Frank Comisar’s presentation. The video is about 39 minutes long and Frank had already began talking and we missed the first part of his presentation. Another new thing to do with Zoom that had its learning curve extended.

Frank Comisar is a previous club president and member. He now lives in Durango, Colorado and has his own business call Scenic Aperture. He left Omaha in 2014 to become a full time nature photographer. He shoots with Fuji equipment for wildlife and Canon for landscape. He gave us a presentation on his Antarctica Expedition trip from January 2020. After his presentation he did talk a bit about his company and upcoming field trips.

Meeting Video

May 20, 2021 Meeting

There are new employees at the Fontenelle Forest. Seems to be some confusion in the scheduling of events and it is impacting our normal third Thursday of the month meetings. One executive assured me we were set to have our next meeting on May 20. Someone scheduled an event with another group on this same night. Kathleen is trying to resolve this conflict with forest executives. We want to get the raptor group to show us some birds on this night starting at 6:30 PM. You will need to bring your camera to photograph these raptors on the patio, I will let everyone know when it is resolved.

Minutes

FONTENELLE FOREST PHOTOGRAPY CLUB MINUTES

APRIL 15, 2021

Meeting called to order by President Phil Mininni

This was a Zoom meeting with 15 members present.

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.

Photos for our display at the Forest will continue to be Water as we had a lot to put up.

Donna Gray was absent so no updates on the Photo Contest.

Per our Treasurer Kathy there is still $1500 in the Treasure and we would like to make a donation to the Raptor Organization to buy frozen rats for feeding them.

A Stone Mountain GA pic for our display of rocks offended a visitor and it was asked that we remove it. There was a brief discussion on how the members in attendance felt about us being censored like that.

May 20^th will be our next in person meeting at 6:30 with hopefully a Raptor shoot.

It has been asked that we still have a zoom meeting in addition to the in-person meeting.

Please think of sending Phil your own personal photos for your own portfolio on the club website.

Frank Comisar was our speaker. He is a previous Club President and member and now lives in Durango, Colorado and has his own business called Scenic Aperture. He left Omaha in 2014 to become a full time nature photographer. He shoots with Fuji equipment for wildlife and Canon for Landscape. He gave a presentation on his January 2020 Antarctica Expedition trip. After his presentation he did talk a bit about his company and upcoming trips if anyone was interested in signing up for them. Check out his website: https://www.scenicaperture.com.

Submitted by: Sue Mininni

Comments

Feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks to all who attended the meeting.

Phil

April 15, 2021

If you haven’t received your Zoom invite for tonight’s’ meeting contact the webmaster Our zoom meetings are for club members and/or invited guests.

webmaster@fontenelleforestphotoclub.org

Zoom meeting

Our next Zoom meeting is on April 15, 2021. It will start promptly at 7:00 PM. We have Frank Comisar giving us a presentation of a trip to Antarctica. Members who have not received an invite by Monday evening, the 11th, contact the webmaster .

Items for sell

We have a subscriber to the website that has asked if he could sell some photographic items. His name is Jeff Beiermann. He is an ex-World Herald staffer and ex-UNO campus photographer. He has a Canon EF 1.4 III extender. He would like $290 for it. I don’t want to publish his email address to the world. Please email your webmaster for Jeff’s contact information. Jeff was going to send me a small list of items he would also like to sell. I haven’t received this list and need to post this blog. If anyone would like to contact Jim, I will give you his email address and you can ask him what else he has in photographic equipment to sell.

Apolitical

That is what we strive to be. We all have an opinion. It is a shame that one opinion has more weight over another. The world, it seems, is upside down. There was no taking down that piece of so-called art of a Crucifix in a bottle of urine years ago. I consider photographs as an art form among other things. The forest took down one of the photos on display there because a visitor was offended by the photo. No names! We are going to meet with the forest admin to discuss this and other planned changes at the forest that will affect our in-person meetings.

Forest Display-Water

Speaking of displays, Judy and her crew swapped out photos with our “Water” photos. They are up and waiting for you to see. I am still waiting for your “water” photo files to be sent to the webmaster. I want to add them to the homepage slideshow. Send photos to Webmaster.

Portraits

We have received plenty of your water photos. In fact we will probably have to change out, after awhile, to display the extra photos received. Good participation! When they are put up at the forest, Kathleen will mail out a notice to members.

Home Page Slideshow

I have received some of these “water” photos via e-mail. I have taken down our Christmas slideshow and put the “Water” photos on our homepage of the website. I would like those of you who have turned in a photo for the forest display, please send the webmaster an electronic file of your photo so that I can add to our homepage slideshow. Send to webmaster .

Shooting in Manual Mode

A short 12 minute video on using your camera’s manual mode. Get out there and experiment.