Discussion Group Notes November 7, 2008
I missed last October 31st to take Julia around for Halloween. It turns out that Bianco's closed at 7 PM for the day leaving Terri, Lee, and John out in the cold. I'll have to be more aware of the holidays and try to get the word out in advance.
This Friday it was just Terri, Lee, and me. John was traveling and Bonnie was not feeling well.
Terri and Lee told me about the Zoo trip, some good and some so-so activities. Terri is looking at possibly buying a harness to carry camera equipment, one without a strap around the back of the neck. I suggested they look into some of the military surplus Molle equipment that you can add pouches to for whatever you need. There are many places that sell these, one of which CheaperThanDirt.com.
Lee desribed a right-angle view finder adaptor that he looked at. This sounds like a great piece of equipment for getting those low down shots, like flowers, so you don't have to lay in the dirt and crane your neck. I looked these up on Amazon.com ("right angle viewer"
and found a number of brands and suppliers from $60 to $150.
Upcoming events include the Lancaster Holiday Parade on December 6th and the Palmdale Parade, possibly on December 13. Sometime in the near future is the Holiday Train which is a decorated MetroLink train, most likely sporting a Santa. I suggested a get-together on Lancaster Blvd some evening to practice taking night lights and special effects with passing car lights. I mentioned that there are some small (1-4 ft high) sand dunes developing on 25th St West just North of Avenue B near Rosamond. They're not large but they are close.
Then we got into discussing having small, local field trips about once a week. These would not interfere with the monthly (approximately) field trips to the more exciting places but they would allow people to pop in and out as their time allowed. As a straw-man we looked at going to the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve at the corner of 35th West and K-8 on December 6 (http://www.cityoflancasterca.org/Index.aspx?page=101). The trails open at about 6 AM or sunrise which would allow us to get some nice morning color shots. We'll be looking to get the word out on this.
A couple of other nearby locations are the dirt-bike track next to the fairgrounds and Willow-Springs Racetrack. I talked to Jim Hutchings, Assistant Manager at Willow-Springs, who said that they would welcome a group of photographers. There would be safety restrictions, such as not getting out on the track or infield but that there would be many other locations for getting good photos. All we have to do is fax him the names of the people attending ahead of time and we could get in free. I didn't ask about non-group entrance but two weekends ago I went to watch my brother on one of the tracks and all I had to do was pay $10 to get in. Mr Hutchings said that, for this year, there are two good races to photograph, a motorcycle race on 29-30 November (this is on a dirt track so there should be some dirt flying from high-speed bikes) and a Porsche club "Speed Trial USA" on 6-7 December. He said that these would be going on all day. From his event brochure it looks like there's something going on about every other day.
Prior to each such outing one of us will try to get out a list of web sites that talk about composition, camera settings, and techniques for the types of photography we expect to catch. Lee suggested the possibility of follow-up visits to the same location to review our pictures and discuss how to improve our techniques. We also talked about ways to get all this information out to just those people who were interested in hearing about it.
Refrain: We meet each Friday at Bianco's Cafe at the South end of the Lancaster Market Place, behind and across the street from Movies 12. The core times are from 7 to 8 PM but there's typically someone there from 6:30 to at least 8:30. Bianco's will keep the lights on for you.
Glenn Olson
Coordinator and Moderator
oglenn@earthlink.net
