Sue Craft our President welcomed 62 members and guest to our January "Open" Competition and General meeting this evening.
We started our evening off with Helen Henry introducing our judge for this evenings Open competition, Liz & Rich Breault. We had 6 slides, 9 prints and 84 digitals for a total of 99 participate in tonight’s competition. Congratulations to all who won and thank you to all who participated. Certificate of appreciation, and honorary memberships were presented to our judges. Thank you to everyone who helped make tonight a success.

Sue Craft opened our December meeting at 6 p.m.

We offered 5 tickets to everyone, as they arrived, for the Opportunity Drawing for items donated by LPA members. Donations of $5 were accepted. All funds donated will be given to  the Friends of the Senior Center. These proceeds can help them with anything from an ice cream social to replacement of tables and chairs. LPA also had copies of the CD and handout from our recent workshop on Creative Photography. These are offered for $5.00.

Sue Craft our President welcomed 31 members and guest to our November general meeting this evening.

Tonight David Wilkins introduced our guest Floris Van Breugel,  Nature Photographer. “Encounters with Ents” Floris will take us through a series of his images that go beyond simple documentation, focusing on the anthropomorphic qualities of nature including studies of sensual sand dunes and rugged tree 'people'.  He gave us a glimpse into his thought process, and shared some of his stories from the field. Through his photography, he shared his creative interpretation of the natural landscape around him, with a passion, elegance, and beautiful compositions.  Floris' images have been featured in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards, Geo International Magazine, NaturFoto, Digital Photo UK, and Living Bird.  He is also one of the moderators for the popular online nature photography forum www.naturephotographers.net. You can find more info on his website here: http://www.artinnaturephotography.com/content.php?page=bio. He stayed and answered our questions which was greatly appreciated. We gave him a Certificate of appreciation, Honorary Membership for one year, and a $75 mileage check.

October 19, 2010

Sue Craft our President welcomed 41 members and guest to our October "Prime Desert Woodland Preserve" Competition and General meeting this evening.

We started our evening off with Cheryl Ross introducing our judge for the evening, Winn Krafton. This month is our "Prime Desert Woodland Preserve" competition that you've been reading about.  We could enter up to 3 images (digital, slide, prints, or any combination) that were taken at the Preserve between April 1 and October 12, 2010.  Images from the competition will be put on a DVD and given to the Preserve for use in their facility and literature, and will include the photographer's name. This was the first of two phase Community Service project for club, the second phase is in the spring. We had wonderful membership participation, 3 slides, 9 prints and 60 digitals in tonight’s competition. Congratulations to all who won and thank you to all who participated in this project. The club presented Ms. Krafton with a Certificate of appreciation, $75.00 check, honorary membership and a warm thank you for spending the evening with us.  Thank you to everyone who helped tonight in making it a success.

Sue Craft, our President, welcomed 53 members and 7 guests to our September General meeting this evening.We started our evening off with David Wilkins, our Vice President, introducing our guest speaker tonight, Michael Gordon.  Michael is an award-winning fine art landscape photographer of unusual and overlooked natural landscapes of California and beyond.

A lifelong student of nature and wilderness, Michael photographs with a 4”x5” view camera and film. Michael’s intimate relationship with the landscape yields photographs of great depth and clarity. He is best known for his black and white ‘Desert’ series which, says Broughton Quarterly, portrays “stunning ethereal beauty from terrain where others see only a bleak landscape.”  Michael showed us a large selection of his  black and white work from the Mojave and Colorado Deserts of California; Yosemite Valley; Death Valley; Bishop area; Utah; to name a few. He shared his philosophies on nature and landscape photography ie “Photographing things for what else they are.”

Michael's photographs have been published in and on the covers of magazines, calendars, textbooks and music CD’s. He is represented by art galleries in the U.S. and Europe, and his fine art prints are held internationally in private collections. Publications and clients include Backpacker magazine, View Camera magazine, T-Mobile, Broughton Quarterly, The Wilderness Society, Campaign for America's Wilderness, USDA Forest Service, Brooks/Cole, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Body-Mind Music, and more. Awards and recognition include International Photography Awards, Prix de la Photographie, Paris, and Black & White Spider Awards. 

Sue Craft our President welcomed 53 members and 7 guest to our August General meeting this evening.

We started our evening off with David Wilkins our Vice President introducing our guest speaker tonight, Greg Russell. Mr. Russell’s presentation “The American West” is a wonderful presentation. He shares many of his beautiful pictures, explaining how and where the pictures were taken. He went over his philosophy on processing an image, some of the digital darkroom tools we should be taking advantage of, the difference between HDR and luminosity masking (look up Tony Kuyper for tutorials) and image blending using Photomatix Exposure Fusion.  If you are confused, don’t be and he stressed DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE CREATIVE! Visit Mr. Russell’s website Alpenglow Images at http://www.alpenglowimagesphotography.com/index.html. His blog is at http://www.alpenglowimagesphotography.com/blog/  We gave him a Honorary Membership and a Certificate of Appreciation for the excellent program this evening.

Sue Craft our President welcomed 62 members and guest to our July Pictorial Competition and General meeting this evening.

We started our evening off with Helen Henry introducing our judge for the evening, Mel Carll, from the Santa Clarita Camera Club. Since our theme was "Pictorial" this month our members entered a variety of different pictures for our viewing. Mr. Carll critiqued each and every picture entered in the competition. We had a total of 30 prints, 56 digitals, and 14 slides for the competition and thank Mr. Carll, and all the volunteers who assisted, and made the evening happen.  Great participation and wonderful pictures entered by all!

We had 48 members and 3 visitors attending our Photo of Year /Installation of Officers General Meeting this evening. Dave Anderson welcomed everyone and announced tonight was our Photo of the Year Competition and Installation of Officers meeting.