2011-10-11 FCDCC Meeting Notes

We had a few new members at the October meeting. Please welcome Jim, Todd, Hannah and Brianna. If you are interested in joining our club, please pay Rich Ernst $20 for annual dues and then contact Mike Barry to add you to the website and email list. You can find us at most of the club meetings and outings.

Ken is our new president elect, and Mike is the new secretary, effective 2011-10-11. We are forming a FCDCC Board of Directors to make business decisions for the club so we don't have to use valuable meeting time discussing them. The board will include the FCDCC officers and one at-large member (Phil).

Our October outing will be this Saturday 10/15 to Rocky Mountain National Park to photograph the Elk Rut and Sunrise at Sprague Lake. Meet before 5am near the southwest corner of the Front Range Community College parking lot (Harmony & Shields), we will be leaving at 5am so we can catch sunrise at Sprague Lake. After sunrise we will go searching for elk and other wildlife in Upper Beaver Meadows, Morraine Park and Horseshoe Park. We plan to stop in Estes Park for breakfast, brunch or lunch depending on timing. Some of our group will be continuing on to Denver to see John Fielder speak at his gallery (John Fielder's gallery: 833 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO). For more info check out: http://www.johnfielder.com/africa-panoramic.php. John will be speaking at 1pm and 3pm about his adventures in Africa.

Our October coffee outing will be Thursday 10/13 at 9:00am at the Full Throttle Coffee Shop (above Boomer's Music - 3761 S. Mason).

We have scheduled another business meeting for 10/25 at 7pm at the Dazbog on Cherry, in the downstairs meeting room. We will be planning outings for next year.

The Exotic Bird Expo will be November 12 and 13 this year, at the Western Stock Show facilities in Denver. They have asked us to photograph their event again this year.

Tony suggested that Halloween in Old Town Fort Collins is a great time/place for street photography.

Our Bosque del Apache outing to photograph the sandhill cranes has been scheduled for Jan 20-23, 2012. The outing will be focused on birds, wildlife, landscape, sunrise, sunset, architecture, and history. Dawn is investigating reservations and opportunities for the trip.

November's outing will be 11/12 to the Big Thompson Canyon to photograph the bighorn sheep rut.

The quality of the photographs in the slideshow for our meetings shows how much our members have been improving their photography, and it has improved a lot. Please continue to submit your pictures (usually to Ken Eis) at least a few days before the club meeting. We are going to start limiting the number of pictures to 2 per member at each meeting. You can send in a picture from any club outings, relating to the meeting topic, or something that you are excited about, we just ask that you limit your submissions to photographs taken in the last month (some exceptions allowed).

Stephanie has been checking into getting hats with our club logo. She found a local business that will charge us $50 setup and then $12-$18/cap or $30/cap with a cape. Turn around time is 7-10 days. We decided that Stephanie should order 12 caps for club members.

Nichole has been checking into getting more business cards printed for our club. The cost is about $0.02/card. We decided that Nichole should order 500 cards. They will be available for club members to hand out as needed. It was noted that Vista Print often has coupons for 250 free cards, and our members might want to take advantage of this coupon to print personalized FCDCC business cards.

Jack provided a generic model release that has been added to the website on the resources page under the Portrait Photography section.

The Homeless Prevention Initiative (HPI) event is coming up, probably the 1st Saturday in December. Harry will be out of town so Rich will be coordinating this year.

The Loveland club LPS will be sponsoring an all day Photography Workshop/Seminar Event on 11/5. Registration is $60 until 10/15, and $70 after 10/15 for non-members.

Thanks to Rich for his presentation on paintography, "Artistically Rendered Photos, or Beyond Filters". Rich's program can be found on the website at http://www.fcdcc.com/docs/2011-10-11-beyond-filters.pdf