As most of you already know, King Photo Supply (King's) has added the Blvd Cafe and Blvd Art into their office space.  This makes it a great place to hold our Friday Night Discussion Group meetings.  This went so well that we decided to make it permanent.

October the 8th was the night before the Streets of Lancaster race and the Blvd was filled with people, booths, and music.  Those of us who were hungry went across the street to the Brooklyn Deli for gourmet soup and sandwiches.  Later we wandered down the Blvd and found that there are several restaurants to choose from and, apparently, more coming so we'll have a variety to choose from, not to mention sack lunches and ordering in pizza.

It's been a while since I posted any notes for the Friday Night Discussion Group (FNDG).  We're still getting good attendance with occasional new people stopping by.  We've talked about competitions, books and magazines, printers and cameras, HDR and luminosity masking, website creation and online photo sharing, and many other photography related topics.

We've discussed techniques such as the street photographer who used a whistle to get people to turn toward him so he could get their faces and a woman who used her looks to get men to stare in the right direction.

On the 9th we had nine contributing attendees and on the 16th we had five.

On the 9th Donna gave away some old Nikon parts including filters and a bellows.  Roger, the recipient, played with his new toys and showed us how they worked.  Phil brought in an original Nikon 35 mm camera for show.  It was quite a museum piece and heavy compared to today's cameras.

Phil passed around an article on USB hardware trojan horses.  Apparently bad software can be passed from computer to computer through thumb drives, other USB devices, and camera memory cards without being detected by current virus protection software.  It's like back to the early days of floppy disks.

I passed around a book and two magazines.

Last week, June 26th, we had seven attendees. This was the first time for Aaron, a friend of Rodger, who just bought a Nikon D3000 kit. We talked about many things including Facebook, Flikr, the San Fernando Mission, and Topaz software, which does High Dynamic Range (HDR) and more.

This week, July 2nd, we had 10 of our usual suspects.

Deborah, Julia, and I were out traveling much of the last month and then catching up on things last week. Hopefully I'll get back to writing up these notes each week.

This night, June 18, we had eleven attendees so it made for a lively evening.  Some of us couldn't tear ourselves away until after 9 p.m. we were having so much fun.  These notes cover only my half the table but the other half seemed to be enjoying themselves too.  I just hope they weren't talking about us at my end of the table.

The previous week there were only five of us. Art and Deborah talked table-top photography and Art suggested Deborah try a couple of things with lights and black strips to help define the edges of the glasses. We also talked about macro lenses, Craig's List, arches at the Devil's Punchbowl, and more.

This night, May 18, we had ten attendees including three newcomers and one returnee from the past.

Nine fantastic photographers found this evening to be light-hearted and enjoyable.

Deborah showed Art her "Tea Rose" photo and they talked tabletop techniques.  Art suggested using strips of black cloth to reflect off the edges of the glass to give them better definition.

Too many commitments in April have kept me from posting my weekly notes, and I'm still behind so I'll just post some of the more interesting items to bring everyone up to speed.

Bryan talked about having another field trip to LA as well as areas like Marina Del Rey, Venice, Echo Park, and more. He even said that he would be willing to lead a field trip.

We've talked about upcoming and potential workshops. Terri plans to do one on scrapbooking and I would like to do one on framing, possibly in July or later.