2012-04-10 FCDCC Meeting Notes

We met in our new meeting room at Ridgeview Classical School
Ridgeview Classical School on the southeast corner of Lemay and Stuart (1800 S. Lemay) Enter through the east side of the building.

We had quite a few visitors at the meeting tonight, please welcome them to our club.

Try using the forum on our website, it can be a great way to communicate if we all start using it.

The topic for our meeting was "Landscape Photography", and Guy Turenne, Andrew Stiff, Harry Strharsky and Ken Eis are our "landscape mentors". Contact them if you have questions about landscape photography.

Please pay your dues for 2012 to Rich Ernst if you haven't already paid. You can find him at most meetings. Annual dues are $25/member with $15 for each additional spouse and $10 for each additional child under 18.

Our club has volunteered to teach a "Night Time Photography" class for the Poudre Library District, and to judge the accompanying photo contest. Please contact Lynne Lewis or Bob Babbs if you wouldn't mind judging the photographs.

Check out what the SIGs (Special Interest Groups), they have been holding lots of meetings and going on lots of outings. Participating in a SIG is an excellent way to develop your skills.

Continue sending photograph submittals for the meetings to KenEis@comcast.net.

Our March outing was to the Loveland Feed and Grain to photograph the building and its contents. Please send your best pictures to Jim Schuler. We have promised to give photos to Novo Restoration in exchange for access to the building. They will try to give us credit for the images when they use them.

The March Travel Slideshow at Mulligan's was lots of fun. We plan to schedule these slideshows quarterly.

Our club has volunteered to photograph the Ridgeview Classical School Prom. It looks like we will be taking some formal pictures and some candid shots. The prom will be at the Fort Collins Country Club on May 5 starting around 5pm. We are looking for volunteers for both formal and candid photography. Send Bob Babbs, info@fcdcc.com, if you are interested. More details to follow...

Mike has created a "Model Shoot" gallery in the "Portraits" section of our club Photo Gallery. http://www.fcdcc.com/PhotoPost/showgallery.php?cat=559 Please post some of your best portraits to this gallery. We are trying to convince models to come to our model shoot May 12, and we will show them our model shoot gallery so they can see the quality of images we take.

The April outing will be 4/21 to Horsetooth Falls and Soderberg. Meet at the Harmony library at 7:30am to carpool to the Horsetooth Mountain Park lot. We will start hiking from the Horsetooth Mountain Parking lot to the falls at 8:00am. The county charges $6 to park, so carpool from the library if possible. The hike to the falls is about 2.3 miles round trip and can be very sunny so be prepared.

The March Coffee Outing will be Wednesday 4/18 at 9:00am at the Fort Collins Coffee House on Mason (used to be the Full Throttle Coffee Shop). We may go to Lory State Park after the meeting to take pictures of spring flowers.

The alternate topic for this month is spring wildflowers.

Thank you Rich for demonstrating how to use the website. Please send email to info@fcdcc.com if you need help logging into the website or using it.

Many thanks to Dan Ballard for his presentation on "The Art of Creating a Powerful Image". Here are a few of the tips from Dan's presentation:
• Take pictures of scenes that interest you
• Ask yourself "What is special about this image?"
• Strive for simplicity
• Be original
• Watch for form, flow, lines, curves, textures, contrast and colors
• Use wide angle, mid-range, and telephoto lenses for landscape images
• Shoot during the magic hours 1/2 hour before to 1 hour after sunrise and sunset
• Add the "human touch" to your landscapes (people or man made items)
• Use the "Rule of Thirds" and put the highest contast area on one of the intersection points
• Think like a painter, if you wouldn't paint an image, don't photograph it
• Have a reason for taking a picture
• Bring a travel umbrella, because bad weather makes good landscape images
• Fires add good color to skies
• Take a mean dog with you when shooting the Maroon Bells, other photographers will give you space
• Editing is crucial, and Lightroom is much easier than Photoshop
• Try using off camera flash to balance tough lighting conditions
• Shoot immature and mature scenes differently

Email mike, info@fcdcc.com, when you find mistakes, missing information or if you have suggestions for the website and I will try to address the issue.