The Dubuque Camera Club meeting on May 20, 2019 was attended by 15 people. One of the missing faces was Ellie Schueller, who recently had knee surgery. We’re sending her good thoughts and hoping she’ll be here for the picnic on June 3rd!

RSVP REMINDER: Club members, watch your email for a link to the RSVP form for the potluck picnic on June 3rd at 6:00 p.m. You are welcome to bring your spouse or significant other, kids, and/or someone who may be interested in joining the club. Please bring a potluck dish to share. The club will provide burgers & brats. The meeting will start a little earlier than usual at 6:00 p.m. and will be our last regular meeting of the N4C season. Don’t forget to submit your Reflections images!

Our new N4C board member, Jennifer Tigges, gave a short presentation about what was discussed or decided at the Wesley Woods mini-convention. Jenn will formally join the board in September, during the Finding Your Light convention in Des Moines.

N4C Competition changes. Because some of the competition category descriptions are changing, our club will need to take a close look at those updates when we start submitting again next fall.

Print competition. Right now only 14% of N4C competition submissions are prints. This is due to the cost and bother. The clubs must bear the burden of postal costs and the hassle of mailing them back to the submitting clubs. There is no standard print size, which effectively gives an advantage to larger prints. Because of these difficulties, our club has competed only digitally for the past several years. The penalty we’ve paid for being progressive and techie is that we’ve lost points in the end-of-the-year calculations. The way N4C points are calculated now, it is not possible for clubs who compete only digitally to win Club of the Year or Member of the Year.

Jenn and Ron are proposing an idea to the N4C board that will improve this flawed system. Potentially — if it is implemented — our club will resume competing with prints in the future. The idea is for all prints to be 8-inch by 10-inch and disposable. In other words, the judging clubs would keep or destroy the prints after they are judged, instead of mailing them back. This will save on postal costs and hassle. In addition, the standard size of 8″x10″ would make a more level playing field for all the print submissions.

Photo essays. On a related note, our club will possibly judge the Photo Essay competition next year. If you attended Blufftops & Visions, you may remember seeing the winning photo essays during a banquet. These are not videos, but a compilation of still images, set to music. The N4C has been lax in the past about the problem of using copyrighted music. However, this rule will be enforced in the future. As photographers, we don’t want people to use our work without permission, so why would we steal the work of musicians? A source of public domain music may need to be found for this competition.

Ethical behavior. Some of the discussion about N4C rule change revolves around the ethical behavior of member photographers. For instance, it’s not always possible for a viewer to tell from a single image how much it has been digitally manipulated. Only the photographer may know for sure if an image belongs in the Digitally Altered (DA) category. Jenn said: “It’s up to you, the photographer, to be honest and to put it in the category it needs to go in.”

Watch the N4C website or newsletter for details about these upcoming changes. Registered club members are supposed to receive the N4C newsletter by email. It comes from photopeople01 at aol dot com. Check your spam folder if you don’t see it. [Side note — Don’t stress over this. I’ve been a club member for seven years and just mysteriously starting getting the N4C Bulletin for the first time. It contains a list of competition award winners, which we go over during meetings anyway. If you follow the N4C Facebook page, you can get a link to the latest bulletin.]

Light Painting. Ron shared his enthusiasm about doing a light painting photo shoot this summer. Everyone had a blast when it was demonstrated by Roger Feldhans at the mini-con. Our club voted to authorize up to $200 be spent on various supplies to make this activity possible. We will plan it for a nice summer night during the blue hour, about 9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Club members, watch your email for an invitation to attend this summer light painting event. Specific details are yet to be determined.

Flash Happening. Our club has spoken for a room at the Flash Happening, a popup art show in the old radio station at 8th and Bluff. The event will be sponsored by the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society and the Dubuque Museum of Art. The building will be demolished after the exhibit ends. Be thinking about weird artistic stuff to do for an art installation. Date and details TBA. [Next fall…? Next year…?]

Critique night. The remainder of the meeting was devoted to looking at and giving feedback on the images submitted for Critique Night as well as the images that have been sent in for the Reflections exhibit. Each photographer had the opportunity to explain their shot. Then Ron led a discussion giving constructive feedback or suggestions for improvement. A few photographers used the written feedback form to respond. Hopefully this critique session was valuable to participants! One of the benefits of being part of the Dubuque Camera Club is the chance to learn from others. Thanks to everyone who attended and participated!