bhpc keeps going in lockdown

Image supplied by Jill Owen - taken long before social distancing imposed.....many thanks!!

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Latest update on club plans

The club committee met online earlier this week and propose the following, as shown below.....but welcome any thoughts and suggestions you may have!!

Our aim is to keep the club going in a manner that provides weekly meetings offering interest, challenge, information, and active involvement for members during these difficult times.

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Revised club programme for rest of 2019/20 season

All events will start at 7.30pm on Wednesday evenings via Zoom, with invites being sent out during the day of the event.

13th May - Club open competition: Lockdown PDIs only - Judge John Tilsley

20th May - Club workshop: preparing and presenting B&W images with Russ Foote

27th May - Club competition : Set Subject Masterpieces - Judge Brian Tarling

03rd June - External speaker, to be announced soon

10th June - Club competition : Best of Year Print - Judge Sue Sibley

17th June - Club competition : Best of Year PDIs - Judge Andrew Mills

24th June - Internal speakers : Presentation on Brazil from Norman and Carol Wiles

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Summer Workshops

If we are able to hold outdoor workshops [dependent on information on lockdown easing from Govt], we will aim to arrange visits to a range of sunset locations around Dorset every Wednesday, from 01 July through to 26 August. We will choose locations where social distancing can be observed, and ask everyone to travel separately.....it is unlikley we will be able to finish the evenings at a pub unfortunately!

If we are unable to hold these outdoor sessions we will endeavour to hold online Zoom events such as workshops/critique evenings/ask the expert Q&A sessions/quiz nights etc etc instead.

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2020/21 Season

Our plans for the new season will be to start as planned with the AGM on 09th September - it is uncertain at this time whether The Hamworthy Club will have reopened by this date, so we may have to begin with meetings online via Zoom. The programme for the season will run as normal we hope, but we will revise our thinking as necessary as time progresses.

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Your Views

As always any comments or observations will be welcomed....positive or negative!!

Regards and best wishes

Ian b

Lockdown opportunities

One of the few advantages of these troubled times, and especially the lockdown, has been the chance to improve some of the things we do as a club, making life easier and more interesting for the members and the committee. Read on to learn more of the things we've done and the things we plan to do

Image by Si Glogiewicz

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Zoom for online meetings

In common with the rest of the planet, we've taken to Zoom to keep in touch with you and keep our programme running as much as possible. We've already hosted a couple of club meetings and have more planned, so if you've not tried it already, please come along to the next meeting. If you want some help starting out, you can contact any of the committee and we'll sort you out!

Zoom will run on any device: PC, laptop, mobile phone or tablet. To get the best from the meeting you ideally need something with a camera and microphone, so you can take part fully. If you want to know a bit more you can visit the Zoom website here

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PhotoEntry for competitions

Entering club competitions just got much easier!

Running competitions and storing the results was always a very intensive and complicated process, so last year the committee introduced a product called Dicentra. The club had owned the licence for a long time but never used it. Lauren set about learning and finally introduced it at the start of this season. It's main benefit was for the competition secretary and the committee, so we wanted to find something that made life easier for our members too.

PhotoEntry allows you to upload your images for each competition in your own time (as long as you do it before the deadline). There's no need to worry about how you name the files, or about padding out image sizes with black borders. Resizing issues are minimal and the program guides you as you go.

Over time you will be able to look back on your personal 'portfolio' and see how you did or remind yourself which images you used.

Our first competition, the lockdown open on 13 May, will be run using entries entirely loaded into PhotoEntry and we've had a lot of entries already, so thanks everyone for getting to grips with it

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Forums for staying in touch, learning and sharing

We've also added a forum page to help members stay in touch. We've started with a number of different boards, to make it easier to find information. Everyone will be able to read forum posts, but only current members of the club will be able to post or reply.

The forum boards are the place where much of the committee messages, information and links will appear in future, so keep your eyes peeled. You can follow boards to get notifications any time something new is added.

We'd love you to take a look and maybe post or reply to the comments already there. Feel free to suggest new topics as well. We hope you'll find it a useful way of keeping in touch during the current restrictions and beyond.

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The bh photography club blog

When we relaunched the club under its new name, at the start of 2020, we wanted a way to let everyone know what was happening, even if they couldn't attend, and to give prospective members a taste of what we are about, so we launched a newsletter.

We've been pleased with the format and content but it has been time consuming to produce, and as such, hasn't been as regular as we'd like.

As a result, we are trialling a blog, and this is the first entry. It's a work in progress, as we try to make it relevant to our other activities, and we'd like to know what you think, so please comment below, or send your feedback to the committee

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Thank you for taking the time to read all this, and we hope you're as excited as we are to have all these new ways to enjoy club membership.

Meanwhile, stay safe and well everyone, and lets all look forward to a day when we can meet again at The Hamworthy Club