The NHCC board met last night, so we wanted to update you on what is going on for the upcoming year. Included in this blog post is the request for two people to assist with some of the club's tasks. Email Tom tlcbam@comcast.net if you are interested in performing these duties. On the recent NHCC survey several people said that they would like to assist with small tasks and jobs, rather than taking on bigger jobs right now. We look forward to getting some helpers.
1. We are looking for a volunteer to make a monthly slideshow of the winning images. You could use ProShow Gold or Lightroom or whatever software you like. FYI, all of the monthly images already appear on the NHCC website on the monthly photos tab. So can peruse them at your leisure, or use them for the EOY selections.
2. The half point scoring system that was tried as an experiment will remain in effect. The survey taken by the NHCC membership clearly demonstrated that members were in favor of the half point system over the whole point system previously used. See survey results at the end of this post.
3. The EOY judges choice had rave reviews and will be expanded to all EOY categories.
4. We had added a new category. Black and White/Monochrome. In addition to two open, one creative, and one assigned subject you can now enter one Black and White/Monochrome image each month. There will be a cumulative score based on the top 6 images, just like creative, and assigned subject, and an EOY (end of year) BW competition section. Black and White/Monochrome.
If all goes well perhaps an additional category would be added for the 2016-17 season. Membership voted BW as the top choice for a new category, followed by people, anything goes (stock and purchased textures could be used), composites, HDR and flowers. See the end of this blog post for the ranking of the categories being evaluated for the new category. The board felt that adding only one new category was prudent this year. The board felt that anything goes, composites, HDR and flowers was already largely covered by the existing creative category. The new categories would allow similar images to be compared to each other, therefore increasing feedback. We all know how hard it is to compare a grungy scene, a portrait of a beautiful young lady, a bird, a BW, and creative side-by-side
5. We have dropped the print category. We discussed combining class B and A for prints, but in looking at the list of print makers, there were only 2-3 people in class A and one person completing class B and moving up to class A that would be competing next year. The decision to drop prints was not easily made and generated lots of discussion at the meeting. Holding a competition with 3-4 people is not as meaningful and eliminating the time for print setup, take down, scoring and comments will allow us to have more time for comments on the other image competitions. We have decreased the total number of images entered each month from 6 to 5 so hopefully that too will leave more time for comments.
6. A print table will be set up for prints to be brought in for viewing. NHCC members could bring in any size, matted or unmatted printed photographs to be viewed by members at the monthly meetings. We are looking for someone to "man" this table. You would place (preprinted) index cards out so that each print has one number and you would have out a (preprinted) paper "ballot" numbered 1-20 and instructions to check off their choice for judges choice and return the ballot to you. You would count the ballots and announce the winner and provide Joan (ribbons) with the maker's name and the image title.
7. Lastly, hopefully you are working on your assigned subjects for the upcoming competition. Assigned Subjects 2015-16:
Sept 28 - Windows
Oct 26 - Blue
Nov 23 - Critters
Jan - SOOC (straight out of camera, NO editing)
Feb 22 - Harbors
March 28 - Storm
April 25 - (the) golden hour
May 23 - Waves (water)
1. We are looking for a volunteer to make a monthly slideshow of the winning images. You could use ProShow Gold or Lightroom or whatever software you like. FYI, all of the monthly images already appear on the NHCC website on the monthly photos tab. So can peruse them at your leisure, or use them for the EOY selections.
2. The half point scoring system that was tried as an experiment will remain in effect. The survey taken by the NHCC membership clearly demonstrated that members were in favor of the half point system over the whole point system previously used. See survey results at the end of this post.
3. The EOY judges choice had rave reviews and will be expanded to all EOY categories.
4. We had added a new category. Black and White/Monochrome. In addition to two open, one creative, and one assigned subject you can now enter one Black and White/Monochrome image each month. There will be a cumulative score based on the top 6 images, just like creative, and assigned subject, and an EOY (end of year) BW competition section. Black and White/Monochrome.
If all goes well perhaps an additional category would be added for the 2016-17 season. Membership voted BW as the top choice for a new category, followed by people, anything goes (stock and purchased textures could be used), composites, HDR and flowers. See the end of this blog post for the ranking of the categories being evaluated for the new category. The board felt that adding only one new category was prudent this year. The board felt that anything goes, composites, HDR and flowers was already largely covered by the existing creative category. The new categories would allow similar images to be compared to each other, therefore increasing feedback. We all know how hard it is to compare a grungy scene, a portrait of a beautiful young lady, a bird, a BW, and creative side-by-side
- The word "monochrome" literally means "one color." Therefore, a monochrome image only includes one color, but may contain many shades.
- You may not include one "other" color, like black and white with a red flower could be entered into Open or creative, but not the Black and White/Monochrome. Images that are not Black and White/Monochrome will be disqualified and not scored during competition (and would count as one of the two dropped images for the end of year cumulative score), but attempt will be made (but not guaranteed) to let the maker know ahead of time if an image needs to be swapped out.
- "Monochrome photography is photography where the image produced has a single hue, rather than recording the colors of the object that was photographed. It includes all forms of black-and-white photography, which produce images containing tones of grey ranging from black to white."
- Black and White images may be directly captured in cameras or changed from color to BW via software. "Color images can be converted to black and white on the computer using several methods, including desaturating the existing color RGB image so that no color remains visible (which still allows color channels to be manipulated to alter tones such as darkening a blue sky, or by converting the image to a greyscale version (which eliminates the colors permanently), using software programs like Photoshop"
5. We have dropped the print category. We discussed combining class B and A for prints, but in looking at the list of print makers, there were only 2-3 people in class A and one person completing class B and moving up to class A that would be competing next year. The decision to drop prints was not easily made and generated lots of discussion at the meeting. Holding a competition with 3-4 people is not as meaningful and eliminating the time for print setup, take down, scoring and comments will allow us to have more time for comments on the other image competitions. We have decreased the total number of images entered each month from 6 to 5 so hopefully that too will leave more time for comments.
6. A print table will be set up for prints to be brought in for viewing. NHCC members could bring in any size, matted or unmatted printed photographs to be viewed by members at the monthly meetings. We are looking for someone to "man" this table. You would place (preprinted) index cards out so that each print has one number and you would have out a (preprinted) paper "ballot" numbered 1-20 and instructions to check off their choice for judges choice and return the ballot to you. You would count the ballots and announce the winner and provide Joan (ribbons) with the maker's name and the image title.
7. Lastly, hopefully you are working on your assigned subjects for the upcoming competition. Assigned Subjects 2015-16:
Sept 28 - Windows
Oct 26 - Blue
Nov 23 - Critters
Jan - SOOC (straight out of camera, NO editing)
Feb 22 - Harbors
March 28 - Storm
April 25 - (the) golden hour
May 23 - Waves (water)