Seventeen people attended the virtual meeting of the Dubuque Camera Club on Monday, February 22nd, 2021. Club president Ronald Tigges led the meeting, with Bob Felderman serving as virtual host.
First thing on the agenda (after updating antivirus software) was looking at the tiebreakers for this month’s Digital Pictorial judging. Last week, the three judges independently scored 117 images from other N4C clubs.
The virtual judging went smoothly this time around, except for a minor tech snafu where spreadsheets came back Read Only. However, N4C rep Cara Pusateri was able to successfully resolve it. “I had to beat the machine,” she said.
Cara had all the top images organized for viewing at tonight’s meeting. The club discussed a few tied images and the judges picked winners as needed. Lotsa discussion and a diversity of viewpoints, but no virtual fistfights, so we’re all good.
N4C rep Kenneth Kiss also shared the Digital Nature returns for February. The club that judged this category opted to use a 27 point scale, which is just weird, sorry. Change is confusing to us oldsters. The Official Competition Rules probably say something about this alternative scoring reality.
A couple of clunky remarks about cropping from that other judging club (we won’t name names) led to some opinions, which led to the club’s plan to Roll Your Own Magazine Cover for the virtual meeting activity on March 15th. More information will be going out to club members by email (or scroll down).
The answer to the voting problem. Speaking of grumbling, during the meeting, thanks to the synergy of groupthink, we figured out why people can’t comment in Smugmug. It’s a browser issue! One Mac user reported that Safari is a bust, but Firefox let him comment (or was it vice versa??).
One secret that stopped Yours Truly from logging in there involved cookies. I had to click on “Allow Cookies” in Chrome. Hint: Look for the hashmark across the little eyeball in the upper right corner of your browser (see below).
Newer members are probably wondering what this voting hubbub is about. It’s a polite way of culling surplus images. Whenever too many images are submitted to an N4C category (usually, our club limit is eight per category), club members can vote on which ones actually get sent in, to be judged by other clubs.
Voting, if voting is needed, happens after the meeting that submissions are due. That’s the meeting where we find out how many images have been submitted. If this all sounds confusing, just remember, your vote is important — because then Cara doesn’t need to carry all the weight of the world on her shoulders (and who would want that?).
Remember, whenever our club judges, it doubles the number of images we can submit in that category next time. This doubling works backwards for end-of-the-season contests (sort of like the logic behind Daylight Savings Time). Trust me, you’ll understand it all eventually. And if your camera is NOT a Canon, that’s okay. We accept diversity — honestly, we do.
Next virtual club meeting on Monday, March 1st
The next virtual meeting of the Dubuque Camera Club will be held on Monday, March 1st at 6:30 p.m. Send in your N4C submissions before the meeting. Our club can submit double in the Digital Pictorial (DP) category. Here’s a link to the club’s online gallery. To learn more, see the Competition page.
Roll Your Own Magazine Cover on March 15th
Looking farther ahead, the March 15th meeting will be about producing an image that could be used as the cover photo of a magazine. Each club member is invited to create and share up to three magazine covers. Use any images you’d like. Be creative!!! Find instructions at this link.
