The next general meeting will be this Thursday, May 19th at 7:00 pm.  Cape Fear Community College, McLeod Bldg, room S-501.

  

Vinny Colucci will be presenting "On The Road Again with Vinny Colucci".  Vinny is a long time friend of the CFCC.  Come early to ensure you get a good seat for the evening's program!

  

 

On May 3^rd our club enjoyed its last print competition for the 2010 - 2011 season.  A total of 68 photographs were entered by our members.  The event was judged by Mike Spencer, a staff photographer for the Wilmington Star News.  We were very fortunate to have Mike to fill in for our previously announced judge for this event who became unavailable just before the competition due to unavoidable circumstances.  Mike's background as a photojournalist made him a good fit for the job and his critiques on the prints were appreciated by those in attendance.  The 14 ribbon winning images were posted shortly afterwards on our website for everyone to view.  Those receiving ribbons were Barbara Snyder, Jim Maresca, Daphne Liguori, Don Simpson, Bob Thurston (2), Les Connor (2), John Wilson, Jo Ann Tomaselli (2), Robin Grotke, John Respess, and Bonnie Jones.  Special congratulations go to Robin Grotke and Don Simpson for winning their first ribbons in our club competitions.

 

Our 6 competitions of the past club calendar year produced a total of 100 ribbon winning images.  Digital copies of those images have been forwarded to a small group of experienced photographers from the Coastal Carolina Camera Club in Brunswick County who will judge these again for us.  This group of images will be scored once more and pared down to the top 20 from our past competition season.  At our June meeting we will show all of these images once again to our members and award a second set of ribbons for the final 20.  We will also award a gold ribbon for the year's best in each of the A and B groups.  Mark your calendar for June 16^th.

 

Our assigned subjects for next year's competitions are now being reviewed and will be announced in June.  Hopefully this will give everyone a bit of advance notice to begin preparing for our next round of competitions that will begin next fall.

 

Based on the results of the recent membership competition survey we will tweak our competitions slightly for the 2011 -2012 season.  The number of our competitions will still stand at 6 but we will be offering 4 in digital and 2 in print.  Most of you know that this will replace one print with one digital competition.  Hopefully this change will be well received by all and be a catalyst for more entries in our competitions.  We will also offer a new feature to our competition nights that will be announced in an upcoming newsletter.  Stay tuned for further details!

Coming up this 2011-2012 season, the CFCC would like to offer its members mentoring opportunities.  This new service would be open to all members, regardless of their skill level.  It can be for a one time issue (such as "I'd love to have some help with HDR." or "I have a new camera and need help finding a few items in my menu") or for a more ongoing learning opportunity (such as "I wish someone could help me get out of Automatic"  or "I really need help learning Lightroom").

  

If you would like to receive some one on one mentoring help from another CFCC member, all you have to do is email our President, John Respess [email protected] with your request.  (Dear John,  I could really use some help with night photography.  Thanks!)   John will reply to you with contact information of a member who can provide you mentoring in your area of question!

  

Mentors may not be available until fall, but do not hesitate to send in your requests.  If possible, matches could be made sooner.  This concept of one on one, hands on teaching will be a great compliment to the monthly educational workshop classes CFCC offers.  We have many chances for growth and learning in this club.  Please, take advantage of these great opportunities!