The Johnson County Camera Club is a non-profit organization based in Prairie Village, Kansas. Members shoot both digitally and slides.

Meetings are the second Monday of each month, September through June.

Come share your photographic interests with other photographers. Learn through club programs and informative sessions. Take part in our intra-club competitions. Show and discuss your photography. Grow through helpful critiques and evaluations. Make new acquaintances who share the same interest and pleasure in photography.

Membership is open to all levels of experience. Whether you are a novice, advanced amateur, or professional photographer, your interest and talents are always welcome.

The Johnson County Camera Club extends to you an invitation to attend one of our monthly meetings!

Monday, March 11, 2013

The Aperture | March 11, 2013


The Aperture


Newsletter of the Johnson County Camera Club

                                   

Established April 1963
jococameraclub.org
jococameraclub.blogspot.com

Meeting:  March 11, 2013 (second Monday)
Time:       6:30 P.M. (chat time), 7:00 P.M. meeting
Location: Asbury United Methodist Church
     Music Room
     75th St. and Nall Avenue, Prairie Village, Kansas

(Park behind the church;  meeting entrance is near the corner on the back of the building near Nall.)

Meeting Agenda
Following a short business meeting, president Steve Wall will introduce our guest speaker, Jim Griggs, who will present an overview of Lightroom 4

 The emphasis will be on the Immensely Powerful Library Module of Lightroom 4 as well as Demos on selecting the top images from a shoot using the National Geographic Editors method; Unique Adjustments in the Develop Module.

Jim is a very engaging speaker.  Be sure to come to this one!  Bruce has seen Jim's LR4 demo and highly recommends it for LR4 and ACR users, as much of the functionality is identical.

Notes from Our Last Meeting
-President Steve Wall presided over the meeting with 54 members attending.
-        Steve did a review of the club budget. 
-        Projector rental (a few club members have offered to rent a projector they’ve acquired) or club purchase was discussed.  It was decided to go with the rental of $20 per meeting.
-        Suggestions were made for fundraising with raising dues being one possibility.  Gratuities for presenters, was one concern; eliminating year end contest awards was also considered.  No decisions were made at this time.  
-        It was stressed that the money given to the church was not for rental of the room but rather a free will contribution for their generosity in allowing use of the facilities.
-        Suggestions for next year’s contest subjects are to be sent to Carol Barlau.
-        Suggestions for field trips are to be directed to the program committee.
-        Carol Barlau presented a narrated program on her trip to Africa.
-        Gretchen Cole presented a program of images from her trip to Upper Michigan.
-        The meeting was adjourned.

At The Galleries – Michael Stone  (Photography currently on display)
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - Block Building, 4525 Oak, KCMO (816-561-4000).
Hours: Wednesday 10am-4pm, Thursday and Friday 10am-9pm, Saturday 10am-5pm, and Sunday noon-5pm.

"Invented Worlds: Photographs by Ruth Thorne-Thomsen" Forty of her works spanning more than three decades are on display. She uses the simplest of imaging devises, a handmade pinhole camera. By making or arranging subjects to be photographed by this technique, she creates a dreamlike vision of wonder and discovery resulting in a landscape of imagination, blurring reality and myth. Besides creating her own camera, she also made all the props in her photos  -  Closes July 28.

Revocup Coffee, 11030 Quivira (behind McDonalds), Overland Park, KS (913-663-3695).
Hours: Monday thru Friday 6:30am-7pm, Saturday 7am-5pm, and Sunday 8am-5pm.

                  "Photography by Ernie Lowden" JoCoCC member Ernie Lowden's photographs offer the viewer a frequently revised range of subject matter and pictorial genre, from traditional landscapes and nature, to subjective abstraction  -  Closes (eventually).

The Editor’s Corner – Bill Staudenmaier
The blizzard of 2013 dumped a good amount of snow; I can almost stand on the compacted remains in the shadows and not sink in.  I don’t recall a recent storm of such intensity, creating a colorless landscape, consisting of shades of charcoal and light gray to bright white.  After our very heavy snowfall it will be interesting to see how long it takes spring to catch up.  The daffodils along the side of the driveway were pushing the envelope.  I buried them with layers of snow when I shoveled our drive, but where the snow has melted they appear to be fine.  Survival is the mode for wildlife.  Slate-colored Juncos and Black-capped Chickadees flit about as if they knew what was going on and don’t really seem to care about whether the snow melts or not.  Yet they don’t neglect to visit my feeder for a little sustenance.  The squirrels of course are wandering about the yard watching the birds and trying to concoct a plan for getting up to my feeder.  No doubt they’re getting tired of digging through the snow to reach terra firma.  But they persevere and manage to dig up acorns either by luck, memory or skill and a good nose.  Then there is always the seed the Juncos and Chickadees scatter on the ground below the feeder.  Squirrels aren’t fussy gourmets.

Unfortunately we mere humans have evolved beyond survival as our primary need in a wilderness.  I say unfortunately because we need so much manufactured comfort for survival. Most things need electricity, like it or not. The other day the electricity went off without warning.  Usually, at least in the past, an outage was accompanied by a loud noise of a transformer failure or a light show in the night sky featuring colors of deep burgundy and steel blue flashes during nights of violent rainy weather.  But then, there was that other exception last year, when the top of my sycamore decided to part from the main tree trunk.  My neighbors weren’t too happy with me since it took out the distribution lines along the backyards.  Fortunately it wasn’t cold and the power was only off for that night and part of the next day.  KCPL crews did an excellent job removing my downed tree parts from their entangled lines, working through the night with minimal noise.  By midday we had power again even though my yard still looked like a war zone.  My neighbors should thank me for that disaster; we got new power lines out of the inconvenience.

But back to this recent problem, we reported it quickly, only to be told by the KCPL recording that they were aware of the outage; no further explanation.  In about half an hour the lights were back on. 

If you sat in the house and merely kept warm following the blizzard, perhaps reading a book or some other sedentary activity, then you missed a great chance to document the world of white that awaited you outside your door.  The first thing to hit me, were the animal prints in the snow, squirrels, rabbits and a few I couldn’t identify.  They all appeared to show a determination to a destination, but sometimes crossed over or circled the yard before moving on. Where the seed from the feeder dropped to the frozen white, small bird tracks in confused miscellaneous directions covered the top of the snow.  Some tree limbs were lying on the ground, broken off no doubt because of the extra burden they held, but in many cases the weight of the snow was responsible for low, just hanging limbs.  A redbud across the fence in my neighbor’s yard popped back into shape after the sun began to melt the snow stuck to its branches.

The snow seemed to change the sounds of the neighborhood.  Few cars traveled the snow packed streets; those that did traversed in a slow quiet mode with more respect.  But even at that, the snow changed the sounds of nature.  Bird song seemed to have a odd muffled tone.

I managed to capture some good abstract shots before the melting began.  The snow packed the holes in my chain link fence offering a textured quilt of white.  A few bushes that had not shed their dry leaves took on top flowers that reminded me of cotton ball fluff.  When the melting started, the small branches on trees lost their white icing, but the main trunks displayed a broad streak of white as if some mad painter had taken a wide brush to them. 

Even though I’m tired of shoveling, I appreciate the disappearing snow and the slow release of the much needed moisture into the soil.      

Images for Show and Tell
There is always a possibility at all of our meetings (if time permits) for member images to be shown and discussed.  Please see the information below regarding sizing of images.

All images should be sized for 1024 pixels on the longest dimension and saved as jpeg.  Images should be renamed to include the artist’s last name in the first characters of the title.  Check your image, if it looks blurry or pixilated (unintentionally), you may have started with a low resolution or highly cropped image.  In this case, you may need to increase the setting in the resolution box to improve the image; but be sure to retain 1024 on the longest side.  Submit JPG files on a flash drive tagged with your name.  Drives will be returned after the images have been loaded into the computer for projection.

Subjects for the Year-End 2012-2013 Photo Contest
Submittals for our Year-End-Contest are due at our May 2013 meeting.  Only images shot since May 2012 are eligible.  There are nine subjects to choose from.  You may select a maximum of six subjects with a maximum of two entries for each of the six subjects chosen.  A professional photographer will judge the contest, with the results to be presented and discussed at the June 2013 meetingA comprehensive list of the rules may be found in the June 2012 newsletter which is on the JCCC website.

2012-2013 Year-End-Contest Subjects
  • Architecture                                                        
  • Critters                                                                         
  • Square
  • Cloudscapes                                                          
  • Happiness Is                                                             
  • Saturated
  • Pattern Interrupted                                       
  • People                                                                            
  • Vintage



Please patronize the following area businesses when you need photographic supplies or camera repairs.

Overland Photo Supply, Inc.    8700 Metcalf,      Overland Park, KS  66212                                (913) 648-5950,                FAX (913) 648-5966,         e-mail – sales@overlandphoto.com,    Hours: M-F 10-7,  Sat 10-5

Crick Camera Shop      7715 State Line Rd.    Kansas City, MO  64114   (816) 444-3390,      e-mail - crickcamera@sbcglobal.net      Established in 1946

The Aperture, newsletter of the Johnson County Camera Club, is published monthly.  Meetings are held the second Monday of each month, unless otherwise announced, at the Asbury United Methodist Church.  Short articles written by club members, or selected from other sources of possible interest to club members, may be sent to the editor for inclusion in the newsletter.  Membership dues of $25.00 for one year are to be paid during the month of September, which is the beginning of the club year.  Anyone who joins the club after March 1st. will not be required to pay dues and will not be eligible to participate in the year end competition.

For additional information or questions on the Johnson County Camera Club, activities, meetings, and membership contact the following members:

President  -  Steve Wall   913-782-6339   seeque2@gmail.com
Vice-President  - Erin Schuerman  913-322-3959   schuermanerin@gmail.com
Treasurer  -  Michael Stone   913-469-5724    mstoneopks@kc.rr.com        
Newsletter Editor  -  Bill Staudenmaier    913-381-0264    wstaude@sbcglobal.net  
Program Committee Chair  -  Erin Schuerman   
Program Committee Members  -  Steve Wall, Brian Schoenfish, Carol Barlau, Ernie Lowden, Carol Henderson, Bruce Hogle, Patricia Fries, Paul Douglas