In Focus: January 1 - February 2
Written By Judith Lilly
This e-newsletter of OPCC events, reminders, and news has been compiled by Judith Lilly. She is our new newsletter editor. Please contact her at opcc4mail@gmail.com to make contributions to the Newsletter.
Welcome to New OPCC Members
Please extend a warm welcome to our newest members: Jim Arnold of Sequim, Sue Neese of Port Angeles, Wendy Olsen of Port Angeles and Sheldon and Sita Thompson of Sequim. We’re glad you’ve joined us!
NEWS
As part of our newsletter for the new year 2023, all of us would like to wish all of our members a happy and prosperous new year filled with a lot of good health and a little good luck that goes a long way.
This will be a great year for our club. Our Board remains active through Zoom meetings making OPCC an enviable, contemporary and stylish club.
Our partnership with the Olympia Camera Club has been extremely well received and will enable us to attract some really high-quality speakers throughout the year as evident in 2022. The presentations will be via Zoom making it very convenient for many to view the presentations in the comfort of their homes.
On January 19, we had a very informative presentation by Izzy Edwards on The Secret Life of North American Owls. These presentations are a benefit of membership and are free to OPCC and OCC members in good standing. For more information, visit the Speaker Series Web site: https://www.olympicpeakscameraclub.org/speaker-series.
On January 25, there was a field trip to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. We had a great turnout of 18 people, including a few of our friends from Olympia. Those who attended had the opportunity to photograph a glass blowing demonstration, architecture, glass sculptures, and much more that the museum offers.
Our membership renewal continues throughout the year. As of this writing we have 47 members, including five new members. The password for the Members Area of the OPCC website will change on February 1, 2023. Check your membership renewal letter for the new password. If you have the lost the new password or have problems logging on after February 1, 2023, contact any of the Board members for the new password. Anyone who renews after the deadline will have all their privileges restored at that time.
It has also been a great year for our photography. We have observed that the quality of images being submitted to Share Nights and Competitions just gets better and better with the improving skills of our members.
We hope to continue the momentum we have built up over the past year into the new year. We have a lot of exciting events planned, including another array of impressive speakers along with fun and educational field trips. Check the website for more information.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
This is an announcement from Kevin Talbot:
Sadly, one of our newer members, Michael Montgomery, passed away on Christmas Day after a long and recurring battle with cancer. He joined in June 2022. He is survived by his wife Debi and several children. I believe they had been married for over 50 years. I reached out to his wife on Facebook to let her know we were going to mention this and see if I can get more family details. We did not know him very long, but everyone in the club that met him liked him and we thought he was a great photographer and enjoyed knowing him. He had some great photos on share nights, including some fantastic film shots from decades ago when he was backpacking on Mt. Baker. Links to his and his wife's FB pages are below:
Michael Montgomery - https://www.facebook.com/michael.montgomery.3701
Spouse Debbi Montgomery - https://www.facebook.com/debbi.m.montgomery
This is an announcement from our President Bruce Fryxell:
Our club has obtained gallery space at the Sequim Museum and Arts for an exhibit this coming June. This is a peak tourist month at the museum and a great opportunity to show off our images to people outside our club and perhaps to sell a few photographs as well. Unlike most galleries, the museum does not take a percentage of the sales. The exhibit will run for the entire month of June, and there is an opening reception on First Friday. In order to make this work, we need to form a small committee to organize the event. Some of the issues that the committee will need to decide is whether there should be a special theme for the photographs, how many artists will participate, the number and sizes of the photographs, etc. Several Club members have exhibited at the museum before and are willing to offer assistance to the committee members. If you would like to volunteer to be on the committee, please contact me at opccpres@gmail.com.
Special Announcement
Kevin Talbot will be the featured artist for February with a photo exhibit of his work at The Blackbird Coffeehouse in Port Angeles. He will be setting up his photos on Thursday, February 2, and they will be exhibited all month. It's a nice coffee shop with great coffee, pastries and free Wi-Fi. He will confirm if the coffee shop will have an "opening" on the first Saturday, February 4th. Here's a link to the Blackbird website and his photography website.
EDUCATIONAL SPEAKER SERIES
Our next speaker in February is Emilie Talpin. Her topic is: Fun with Water Drops: The Art of Capturing Refraction. She will be speaking about the world of water drop photography. We will be having a field trip in March to practice what we learn in this talk. Check the website for more information.
Use the OPCC Education Night Zoom Code to access this meeting. Click HERE for the OPCC Zoom Codes webpage.
MEMBER SHARING
Next Member Share Night Meeting is Thursday, February 2 at 7:00 PM. Member Share Nights are the first Thursday of each month. The Special Topic for February is "Museum / indoor sculpture photography". The in-person meeting will be at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Sequim. Anyone not wanting to attend the in-person meeting at the church will still be able to participate via Zoom as usual.
Use the OPCC Member Share Night Zoom Code to access this meeting. Click HERE for the OPCC Zoom Codes webpage. For more information or questions about OPCC Member Share/Competition Night, consult the website or contact OPCC Member Share Night Chair Dan McKenna (opccphotos@gmail.com).
FIELD TRIP NEWS
The date for our next Field Trip will be Saturday, February 25, 2023. The Field Trip will be in Victoria, BC to visit the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit at the Royal BC Museum. At this time, there are no health restrictions on entering Canada or returning into the U.S., but this will be monitored as the date gets closer. This trip will entail a ferry ride from Port Angeles to Victoria and walking to the museum from the ferry terminal, a 6-minute walk.
We will meet as a group for lunch, and find photographic opportunities to fill the hours after lunch until the ferry returns to Port Angeles at 4:00 pm. Passengers must be on the Blackball Ferry in Port Angels in the morning by 7:40 am. The cost one way on the ferry is $21.75. Admission to the Museum is $18 for adults and $11 for Seniors. Passports are no longer required to travel to Victoria if you have an ENHANCED DRIVER’S LICENSE.
Please contact Ed Hartman to confirm your participation and submit contact information before the date of the field trip. We especially need to know those who are planning to go to Victoria early and to meet as at the museum. Contact Ellen at fieldtrips4opcc@gmail.com or call Ellen or Ed’s phone numbers from the Member List.
COMPETITIONS
Northwest Council of Camera Clubs (NWCCC) is conducting its Third Annual Digital Traveling Image Salon (TIS). Newcomers to the club may not be aware of this annual competition. OPCC decided not to participate in 2022 so there hasn't been much discussion of it during this year's club meetings. In its first year, though, OPCC was an active participant.
NWCCC recently solicited input from member clubs about their intent to participate in this competition in 2023. The OPCC Executive Board has decided to participate again this coming year. The photo submission deadline was January 26, and we received more than the minimum number of entries to allow us to participate.
The Traveling Image Salon concept is that each participating club submits a collection of images supplied by its members to NWCCC. Then, on a monthly, “round robin” basis, each club is given a link to a different participating club's submitted image gallery. Club members vote for their favorites in that gallery, a “people's choice” type of vote. At the end of this “round robin” voting cycle, each submitted image's votes are tallied. The top images by vote count for each club are then submitted by NWCCC to a jury for final judging.
Awards will be 1st, 2nd, 3rd Place, Honorable Mention, and Special Awards in categories like Portrait, Photojournalism, Nature, Creative, Landscape, Monochrome, Macro, with the exact list to be determined at the NWCCC TIS Director’s discretion.
For 2023, there may be separate Color and Monochrome Divisions. The timeline for the competition is
• Early March: NWCCC will distribute links to the gallery of images for a club to vote on, along with voting instructions to each participating club's TIS Director.
• March - late October: “Round robin voting” by club members occurs monthly
• November: Winners announced at the annual NWCCC Conference.
PSA Interclub Competition
The finalists have been selected for Rounds 2 & 3 of the PSA Interclub Competition. The photos will be posted to Competition Galleries on February 10th. You may view a slideshow of the images by going to the website External Evaluations and Competition page.
Spring Fair Photo Competition April 2023
Sponsored by the Tacoma Photographic Society. This is an annual competition limited to local photographers and PRINTS only. Go towww.tacomaphoto.org to get all the info you need to enter this competition.