We are very excited about the turnout and enthusiasm shown for the first meeting of the Bedford Center for the Arts Photo "Geeks" Group and the promise that holds for our future meetings. It was great to meet so many likeminded photographers.
Outdoor Photographer's editor in this month's 25th anniversary edition, talking about the magazine's contributors, wrote: "...they show us all how to blend equipment innovation and fundamental technique to achieve the best possible results." We thought that this was an excellent summary of what we can offer to each other especially if we view "best results" as meaning improving our abilities to tell a story, evoking an emotional response and realizing our individual photographic goals.
As we reviewed our notes from the evening (click here to read a summary of the meeting) we were impressed with the range of the discussion and the knowledge and dedication to photography of all of you. Clearly, while the first meeting exceeded our expectations, we feel that the group is still very much a work in progress and that we have an opportunity to create a resource of unique value to all of us.
The next meeting will be on Tuesday, January 4th at 7:30PM, with a somewhat limited agenda to leave room for continued discussion about the group itself. Future meetings will be held on the first Tuesday of every month. In the event of a weather cancellation, we will let everyone know by email the day before that we're postponing it to the following Tuesday.
Agenda:
- Main topic: Workflow with Michael Baker leading a discussion with Lightroom 3 as one possible tool.
- Creative image critique: John Wiliszowski will lead a discussion on the creative issues related to a few third party images.
- Continued organizational discussion including:
- Structure and topics for future meetings
- Alternatives for an online resource for the group
- Possibilities for the group to "give back" to the BCA
In creating the agenda, we tried to strike a balance between what we perceived as the two main areas of interest we heard from the group: technical understanding and artistic exploration. We selected a topic, workflow, which seemed to generate the most discussion at our first meeting. This is an interesting topic because every photographer implicitly or explicitly creates a workflow that affects his/her results. We also felt that most of the other topics on the list that Mike Milicia provided follow naturally from the concept of workflow.
Michael Baker has generously offered to lead our first discussion. As you'll note, we said "lead" and not "teach". The general idea is that each topic we select to cover is really a platform for us to share our knowledge, excitement, questions and concerns. With this in mind we hope that each of you will find a topic that interests you and that you will lead a conversation in one of our future meetings.
We'd especially like to thank Julie Turner for coming up with the idea for this group and for helping to organize it.
Please let us know any thoughts you might have for how we can improve the group and we look forward to seeing you on January 4th. Feel free to invite your friends who might be interested.
So we have a sense of how many people are planning to attend the next meeting, please RSVP to this email
Thanks and have a great holiday season.
John Wiliszowski
Bob Bass
Marv Goldschmitt 
