Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 52 members and guests to our General Meeting and presentation by LPA member Holly Peskin, on “Action Photography & Back Button Focus”.

A bit about Holly… ten years ago, she bought a Canon Rebel entry level digital camera. She said she’s always had a good eye for composition, her only saving grace!  It wasn't until she went to the AV Fair in 2011 and walked through the photography exhibit and the President at the time handed her an LPA flyer, and encouraged her to join. She joined LPA, and it literally catapulted her enthusiasm, her desire to learn how to get her camera off of automatic, and finally learn how to really work her camera!  By self-teaching, and getting better at it, she developed a great hobby, and a true passion for photography! She is more technically savvy now, and interested in learning most types of photography in order be well rounded. In the vast sea of photographers these days, she is trying to find and create her own style now, and says that is a challenge in itself!

After joining the LPA in 2011, she quickly progressed to LPA Master Photographer. She has learned so much from being part of LPA and her fellow photographers and she wanted to “give back” and created a presentation for the LPA, to be followed by a field trip, where one can practice their newly learned skills.

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 50 members and guests to our General Meeting and Competition Night with “Nature” as the theme and Lin Craft as judge.

Marine biologist and world traveler, Lin Craft, from Fallbrook, CA has won numerous awards for her photography and her images have appeared in various publications including books, brochures and calendars. Lin has had several exhibitions of her work and sells fine art prints and cards in local art venues. She regularly judges for local camera clubs and for International Photography Exhibitions. Lin is president of the Fallbrook Camera Club and a past president and Fellow of the Southern California Association of Camera Clubs. She has held numerous positions in PSA and is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Nature Division. Lin received her APSA in 2000. She is multi-starred in Exhibition Competition in Color, Nature and Travel.

We had a total of 82 entries.  For digital entries, we had 33 Novice, 2 Amateur, 16 Advanced, and 24 Masters.  For print entries, we had 0 Novice/Amateur and 7 Advanced/Master.  Congratulations to all the winners!

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 53 people to our General Meeting and “Nature” Critique Night.

LPA Master Photographers (also grads of the PSA Image Analysis course) Nan Carder, Tina Crowe and Sue Liberto offered critiques on 55 images submitted by 19 different photographers.  Subjective opinions were offered on how the images could be improved and how well the image fit with the LPA “Nature” definition, especially the “story telling” value.  Entrants were encouraged to read the competition definitions and a handout was provided.

The movie trailer for Finding Vivian Maier was shown.  It’s a documentary about a mysterious nanny who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that were hidden in storage lockers and discovered decades later, and is now among the 20th centuries greatest photographers.  A show of hands was taken to see how many might be interested in viewing as an LPA event.

Kathy Newman, Best of Division Winner for Amateur Digital Creative, demonstrated how her image was created using Photoshop.  She gave a demo on layers, masks, clipping masks, and brushes.  Check out the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkcS8YayxHA to see the process she used.

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 44 members and 2 guests to our General Meeting and Competition Night with “Photojournalism” as the theme and Stuart Lynn as judge.

Stuart Lynn is President of the Southern California Council of Camera Clubs (S4C) and Competition Chair of the Coachella Valley Desert Camera Club (CVDCC).

He has been awarded the APSA honors from PSA, along with his HonS4C and DFS4C honors by S4C for his work in supporting S4C’s activities and for his photographic achievements. He has several times won Photographer of the Year and Image of the Year awards in CVDCC competitions and is an experienced competition judge. He has chaired or co-chaired several international photographic competitions recognized by the Photographic Society of America (PSA).

He was an early adopter of digital photography and combined photography with his professional background in the computing field. He has also developed many computer systems to support photography club activities and competitions, including support for international competitions.

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 55 LPA members & guests to our annual Holiday Party.  A gracious thank you was given to the many people who helped with the party.
Our wonderful volunteers transformed the senior center into a party atmosphere, with tables covered in red & white, topped with fresh cut springs of pine and pine cones.  Holiday music filled the air, and friends joyfully mingled in their holiday attire.

The delicious dinner was Mexican food catered by El Pollo Loco and included fire roasted chicken, enchiladas, rice, beans, corn, cole slaw, salad, chips and salsa. The colorful desert table was potluck style and worthy of photographing.  Coffee, tea, bottled water and soda were also available.  
Before dining, Dale Ware read an “Inspiration”, a moment to reflect upon this past year and our passion for photography.  It was originated by Joanne Stolte in 2009, and customized a bit for LPA.

During dinner, images submitted for the LPA logo contest were anonymously displayed.  Our members have design talent!  Images were entered from Sarah Osenga, Douglas Wade, E-Lance, Kurtiss Humphrey, Michael Urban, and Rock Myers.  The existing LPA logo was also included as an option.  And the winning logo was created by… Douglas Wade!  Congratulations!!  Thank you to the contributors to LPA logo contest.

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 42 LPA members and visitors to our General Meeting and Mini Photo Tips presentations by David Wilkins and Douglas Wade.

David Wilkins demonstrated a mini photo tip on “How to use Photoshop to Add a Vignette” and took us step by step through the process for several types of photos.  He provided a handout listing the steps to follow.

Douglas Wade demonstrated “Skin Retouching” using Lightroom and the Portraiture plug in for Photoshop.  He also showed how Bellevue Avenue software offers time saving, finely tuned Photoshop actions and how that combined with his Lightroom presets make for pristine photo editing.

Following the presentations, we broke into smaller groups for hands-on camera training, and question & answer sessions.  Groups consisted of Canon, Nikon, “other cameras”, and laptop/editing.  Everyone benefitted from working in those smaller groups.

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 50 LPA members and 2 visitors to our General Meeting and Competition Night with “Monochrome” as the theme and Mel Carll as judge.

Mel Carll is a Professional Photographer in Santa Clarita.  He also teaches beginning photography classes at his studio Santa Clarita Valley Center for Photography. Mel is currently the President of the Professional Photographers of Los Angeles County.  Mel’s passion is creating amazing and fun images. Mel’s comments on competition images were very educational as he referred to the importance of cropping, paying attention to “hot spots”, tonality, and offered tips on when a vignette helps to focus the eye on the subject, and how key lines can keep your image maximized in the frame.

We had a total of 92 entries with 18 prints and 75 digital.  For print entry participants, we had 7 intermediates, and 11 masters.  For digital entries, we had 21 novice, 2 amateur, 21 advanced, and 30 masters.  Congratulations to all the winners!

Douglas Wade, our President, welcomed 53 LPA members and visitors to our General Meeting and Photo Critique session.   

This was the second in a series of a two month trial period for photo critique sessions.  LPA members anonymously submitted up to 5 images each, for a total of 68 images.   The images were critiqued by 2 of our Master level photographers. Nan Carder and Don Bennett commented on all the images and pointed out the specific qualities that made them stand out, such as “impact”, “rules of composition” and “technique”, and offered suggestions on how some could be improved (mostly by cropping and avoiding those white hot spots).  Nan, our PSA Rep, offered suggestions as to where some of the images would fit in for PSA and S4C competitions.  Everyone benefited from their comments and will no doubt capture better images in the future.  Afterwards, a survey was passed out so that the board can evaluate the members input and participation and decide on how to move forward. Thank you to all that participated and to our Master photographers.