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