This is a summary of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and after-meeting held Monday, 13 October for the benefit of our members who were unable to attend. The official minutes were recorded by Club Secretary Andrew Leece.
The AGM
Club President Deborah Keir welcomed everyone and gave her report followed by Sam Mariani, Competition Steward, and Arthur Coates, Secretary.
Click below to read the reports:
AGM Competition Steward Report 2014
Committee elections were held and the results were as follows:
President: Deborah Keir
Secretary: Andrew Leece
Treasurer: Arthur Coates
Competition Steward: Sam Mariani
Other committee members:
- Robin Tully
- Michael Jones
- Theo Kyrillidis
- Cosette Paneque
- Fabian Scarmozzino
- Sharon Crabb
- Lisa Rabbito-Nolen
- Open
The next committee meeting is Monday, 17 November.
This concluded the official AGM and the rest of our meeting time was spent discussing remaining events this year and ideas for 2015.
Other News
The Preston Photographic Club has held exhibits at michaels Camera Video Digital store in the CBD. Unfortunately, the exhibition space is not available this year. An exhibition was proposed at Newlands Primary School and that space is available. However, we are need of an organiser. If you are interested in organising this event, please contact us. We also discussed exploring other venues in the City of Darebin for an exhibition next year.
We are open to suggestions for our library. If there’s a book or an artist that should be represented in our collection, please contact Librarian Michael Jones. For a complete list of titles currently available, please see our Library page.
Competitions
Various members have expressed they would like to explore alternative ways in which competitions are judged including:
- Moving away from the first, second, third, and highly commended points-based scoring system to highly commended and commended without scores from judges, which is a common practice among Victorian camera clubs
- How to score the images for the End of Year Awards
- Limiting the number of entries
- Changing or eliminating the number of points for entries
- More clearly defining the criteria for themes and for judging
- Sourcing judges outside of VAPS
Ideas for competition themes included Abstract, Travel, Sport & Recreation, Alphabet for the Assignment, Negative Space, and Complimentary Colours.
There was consensus that three interclub competitions – VAPS, Preston UK, and Parklands – was enough and working well.
Program
Previous feedback from club members was that hands-on workshops were favourable to guest lectures. Ideas for 2015 included:
- One-station portrait lighting workshop
- Night walk during daylight savings time to take advantage of the sunset and the blue hour
- Short consecutive workshops on naming competition photos properly, sizing them, calibrations, etc.
We would also like to continue with the weekend away, weekend outings, and social nights. For our weekend away, we are proposing Beechworth.
We will continue to explore larger venue options as we are outgrowing our current facility.
Coming Up
27 October: We will be judging the Reflections competition. Also, entries are due for the End of Year competition. The Competition Steward has all of this year’s winning digital images so far. Members should submit their winning prints if they want their prints considered. We also ask that members holding perpetual awards please return them at this time so that we can have new plaques in time.
10 November: Submissions are due for the Calendar Shots Assignment. Up to three digital shots may be submitted. Each shot should be suitable for a month in a calendar – preferably evoking that time of year. Label your photo with the calendar month it is intended for, the image title and your competition number. An image will be selected for each month of the year. Novices will not be judged separately for this assignment. One image per member will be selected for the final calendar unless insufficient images are entered.