To establish a successful

camera/photography club
or
revitalise an existing one .

Written by Ric McDonald

WAPF Committee 2010/2011
Past President Gem Camera Club Kalamunda
Competition Director
February 2011

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Ask yourselves the following questions.

1) Who are our potential members

a) The general answer is people interested in Photography
b) They will fall into several groups
i) Experienced amateur photographers
ii) New amateur photographers
iii) Professional and semi professional photographers
iv) Friends or partners of members.

2) How do we find these new members?

a)

Experienced amateur photographers will take note of events you run or information
in the local paper. They will frequent the local camera shop.

i) So Run some events

ii) Publish information in the local paper.
iii) Make yourselves known to camera shops. and leave information about your club.
b) New Amateurs will also watch for information in the local paper, they may ask the
local camera shop about groups in their area, but primarily these are people who will
use the internet to find information.
i) So you need a web site ( see web site options)
ii) You need to look for photography forums that operate in your area ( usually the
state ones will have the best potential membership)
(a) IN WA the most prominent of these is PIP( Photographers in Perth) a
forum on flickr with over 1500 members.
iii) Plus the above points.
c) Professional and Semi Professional
i) Similar to experienced amateurs , they will be on the lookout for events and local
paper stories about your club. they will probably also be members of on line
forums like PIP on flickr . these are also a valuable resource as judges for your
photographic Club competitions. ( See Judges )
(1) You need to seek them out and ask if they are prepared to judge the odd
event for you , in the main they will be pleased to be asked and keen to help.
(2) Again run and publicise events
(3) Get onto the forums and talk about your club.
(4) Get a great website so you can be found on searches.
d) Friends and Partners will find you and come along provided there is a fun and social
aspect to your club

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3) What do they want from a photographic club?

a) Experienced amateurs will want to push the knowledge envelope and learn more
through the association with other photographers.
b) New amateurs , commonly have just acquired a new camera and realist that there is
more to it than fully auto. These members want to learn the basics and then will want
to continue to learn.
c) Professional and Semi Professional also want to learn new skills and continue to be
challenged photographically. They will often also be keen to assist new
photographers to learn their craft.
d) Friends or partners want to be part of the Club but not necessarily be involved in
photography competition.
e) All of these groups want a cohesive club that provides a Learning and Fun
environment.

4) How best can you provide for this

a) Learning
i) Regular Competition
ii) Regular workshops
iii) Participate in industry body events, like those run by the West Australian
Photographic Federation.
b) Fun Environment.
i) Have a member responsible for welcoming visitors, introducing them around and
explaining club procedures.
ii) Run the odd event that has a minimal photography content.

5) Traps and pitfalls for Photographic Clubs.

a) Do not hold Club meetings in conjunction with competition nights. if you need
a general meeting call one especially otherwise manage the club from within
committee and announce committee decisions in a short announcements
segment at the beginning of the competition night or workshop.
b) Stale office bearers.
i) To avoid members holding office for too long and becoming stale, build into your
constitution or club rules a clause that states that members cannot hold office for
more than two consecutive years.
ii) This has a double benefit,
(1) No stale office bearers, with the best intentions these will bog the growth of
any club.
(2) Members will be more likely to take on some club responsibility if they know it
is only a 2 year stint.
(3) new Office bearers bring new ideas into the club and keep it interesting and
progressive.
c) Not keeping up with changing environment.

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i)

Clubs must be responsive to changes in technology or they will fail in the long
term.
ii) There is no point in 2011 for clubs to base on old technology,
iii) Recognise change quickly and adopt it at club level. I have no idea what new
technology will evolve in the next 10 years but I do know that what we know
today will change.
iv) Change can be invigorating when created by us but debilitating when forced on
us, which should we choose is a no brainer.
d) Recognise the 80/20 rule , 80% of the work will be done by 20% of the members, this
does not change much so accept it, work with it and move on.
e) The 80/20 rule also applies to competition, where 80% of the prizes go to 20% of
members, work hard to lift the standards of newer and inexperienced members and
they will progress up the ranks but the 80/20 rule will still apply.
f) Continue to ask members what they want from the club, the 80/20 rule says that 80%
will go along with what the vocal 20% want , over time some of the 80 will move to
the 20 so keep asking and don't be discouraged by apparent apathy amongst
members, there is only room for a few drivers and most will be passengers.

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The Club
1. How many members do you need?
a) If you follow the Who and How above all you need is enough to start a committee, 4
or 5 will do it.
b) Clubs that are providing a learning and fun environment have between 30 and 100
members your club will grow if you provide this fun , learning environment..

2. What office bearers do you need?

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

a. Initially
President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer ( Can be Secretary, Treasurer for a small Club)
Competition Director. ( to manage your competitions.

As the Club Grows you could add some or all of the following positions
7. Web Master ( responsible for maintaining the Club Web Site )
8. Workshop director ( responsible for organising Club Workshops)
9. Special events director ( responsible for exhibitions etc.

3. When should our Financial year be?

a) This is up to you but makes sense for WAPF affiliation to run by the Calender year.
so your club annual fees are due and collected just before the WAPF fees are due at
the end of February.
b) If your Club AGM is held towards the end of January or early February with Club
Fees due immediately after this will fit in well with WAPF fees due end of February

4. How often to meet?

a) Most Successful photographic clubs meet monthly for competition and in between
for workshops. a basis would be to plan 10 competitions and 4 workshops during the
year.

5. Should you become incorporated?

a) Incorporation has a number of benefits.
i) it provides structure to your organisation with a constitution to follow, properly
developed this constitution will give the club structure and guidelines to follow.
ii) It will provide for eventualities
iii) It will provide a basic set of rules governing meetings and office bearers.
iv) it will protect members from possible litigation.
v) A draft constitution will be available to download from the WAPF Web site.

6. Should we affiliate with the West Australian Photographic

Federation , WAPF?
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a) Affiliation with the WAPF provides a number of benefits.

i) Insurance, the WAPF provides blanket public liability insurance for members of
affiliated clubs providing protection for club events in case of accidental personal
injury or property damage, the terms of this policy are downloadable from the
WAPF website www.wapf.org.au
ii) It provides members access to Workshops and events run by the WAPF on
behalf of its members.
iii) The WAPF provides support to Camera /Photography clubs for club workshops
and events.

7. What does Affiliation with the WAPF involve?

a) Simply write to the Secretary of the WAPF , the current address is on the web site
and request membership giving as much information as you can.
i) Once accepted go to the WAPF Web Site, Affiliated Clubs page
ii) Follow the link to the Affiliated Clubs Fee Payment Form
iii) Input your club information.
iv) Fees for the 2011 year are $25 per Club plus $12 per member of your club.

8. What sort of competitions should we run and how to judge them.

a) The transition to digital has changed this landscape.
i) Some of the older clubs still run print competitions each month.
ii) Some run both Digital Projection and Print.
iii) Newer and modern clubs use Digital projection only for monthly competition.
The benefits of this are
(1) Cost to members is low, as there is no printing and mounting costs
(2) Club meetings run smoothly and don't take a lot of time, this is important to
new and working members
(3) Aim to be finished by 9:30pm

What Sections should we have?

iv) As a guide the common sections are
(1) Set Subject ( the club sets a subject for each monthly competition, eg Portrait
of 1 or more persons, a flower, long exposure etc. it is a good idea to use this
to reinforce a recent workshop, so if you have a workshop in March covering
long exposure, then your following competition could be a photograph using
long exposure.
(2) Open Subject:- this is usually the most popular where any subject will fit the
criteria.
How much post production is allowed?
(a) In Set and Open subjects post production with software is allowed to the
extent that an element may be removed ( eg an ugly sigh an a landscape
) but you may not add an element ( eg you can't add a seagull to a beach
scene to improve the balance or selectively change colours in a scene.
Ultimately it is up to your club to set these boundaries but these are a
good guide.
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(3) Creative :- in a creative section additional design elements can be added to a

photograph, or two photos merged, in fact any post production technique is
allowed in Creative.

9. How do we present digital images for competition?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Older more established clubs will have a club Laptop and Projector
The Projector needs to be HD.
Other clubs use or hire members or community equipment
The Lotteries Commission is sympathetic to clubs applying for grants to acquire
equipment. which will usually be granted on the basis of the club contributing 10% of
the value from their own resources.
e) Ideally Projectors and Computers should be calibrated on a regular basis, equipment
for this is available in the $300 price range and can be hired out to Club members to
help defray this cost.
f) In a calibrated world an image on your own computer monitor should look the same
as the one projected at club events, the only way to achieve this is for both to be
calibrated.

10. Two Basic types of HD Projector.

a) LCD The older, less expensive type employs three transparent liquid-crystal-display
LCD panels, one for each of the primary colours (red, green, and blue)
b) DLP A newer, more expensive scheme is known as Digital Light Processing (DLP), a
proprietary technology developed by Texas Instruments. In a DLP display, tiny
mirrors are used instead of transparent panels
c) DLP Projectors are now price competitive and offer lighter weight, higher contrast
ratios and less pixelation the higher contrast ratios provide a better image projection
quality in semi lit conditions like daylight in a building where it is impossible to
completely black out.
d) Currently ( 2011 ) good quality projectors are available in the $2500 to $3000 price
range.

Resolution
Brightness
Contrast
Size
Weight

Compare a DLP and a LCD Projector from a similar price point

Epson TW 3600
Mitsubishi WD620U
1920 x 1080
1280 x 1200
2000 Lumens
4000 Lumens
50,000 : 1
200000 : 1
450 mm x 390mm x 145
345mm x 270mm x 129mm
7.3 kg
3.6kg

There are for's and against for each, do your homework and work out what is best for
you.

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11. How do we manage a Digital Competition?

1. Set a standard image size , A guide here is use the resolution size of your projector
for the longest side egg: 1920 or 1280 pixels on the long side For emailed entries a
file size of 400kb works.
a. If you are using a web based entry system then larger files can be used.
2. Entries can be emailed to the competition director with a closing date say 5 days
before the competition night
3. The competition director then prepares a slide show using powerpoint or similar of
the images saved in a pdf format and then either emailed to the Judge or uploaded to
the Club Website for the Judge to download.
4. It is preferable to give the Judge at least 48 hours to complete judging in their own
time, this also works well for Club Self Judging.
5. The benefit of this system is time on the night, if the Judge has not seen the images
before the competition night then they will need time on the night to form an opinion
where as with the images prejudged a club will get more value out of the judge as
he/she will have more time to critique images for the benefit of members,
6. ( remembering here that the goal of the club is learning in a fun environment.)

12. How do we organise Judging?

For City based clubs one solution is to ask local professionals to judge and if not self judge
within the club.
Most professional photographers are more than happy to assist maybe twice a year. and
will usually provide good sound commercial critique of photos entered.
It can be difficult to get members to judge other club members work especially if they have
also entered
Payment of Judges this varies from club to club, the range would be from $20 to $100, on
the adage that you tend to get what you pay for then maybe the $100 is more appropriate
this equates to around $30 per hour which is quite cheep for a professional service.
to help finance this fee , run a raffle on club nights
For Country based clubs it may be difficult to get judges to travel one solution is to email the
images to you judge as for city based clubs and for the judge to respond by email, however
there is a better way that provides your members with good critique and feedback.
You will need an internet connecting at your venue for this and use skype to communicate
with your judge during the meeting, the judge will have a duplicate of the slide show to view
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in sync with your club presentation and give critique as if they were present, with speakers
attached to your club laptop all members can hear and communicate with the judge.
The Skype system is being used by several Country Clubs with great success

13. What sort of workshops should we run

a) Photography Club workshops fall into two main categories
i) Camera related workshops.
(1) Examples
1. Using Manual Controls
2. Using Shutter speed for blur in moving objects
3. Using Shutter speed to sharpen moving objects eg sports
4. Using Aperture to change the depth of field
5. Filters and their effect
6. Lens Choices for DSLR Cameras.
ii) Post processing related workshops.
(1) Examples
1. Removing unwanted objects from a photograph
2. using Curves
3. Using levels
4. layers
5. file management systems.

14. A Typical Club Calender.

Most clubs hold a competition each month and a workshop or outing each month
January .... Club AGM
February to November A workshop or photo excursion at one end of the month and a
competition at the other
Mid Year hold an exhibition in a shopping centre or other high traffic area.
End of November or early December , club windup event Christmas party or similar with
presentations of Photo of the Year judged from the winning entries during the year.

15. Funding your Club.

i) Club membership fees.
ii) Local Government grants
iii) Lotterywest WAPF has a program of small loans available to support clubs
applications for grants.
iv) Sausage Sizzles
v) Public workshops.
vi) Raffles at Club Meetings.

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