Photo Club Fun

by Joseph T. Sinclair

When I decid­ed to do a blog on phone cam­era pho­tog­ra­phy, I thought, I need to get out and do more shoot­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I’m not a soli­tary per­son, and I don’t like to do things by myself. I have sev­er­al friends who are pro pho­tog­ra­phers, but they like to work alone. I’ve nev­er had much luck in talk­ing them into let­ting me go out shoot­ing with them. As for the remain­der of my friends and fam­i­ly, they don’t seem to have any inter­est in going out shoot­ing pho­tographs just to shoot photographs.

So I decid­ed to join a pho­tog­ra­phy club. The clos­est is the Napa Val­ley Pho­to­graph­ic Soci­ety. This is a group of ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers and pros, as well as artists using pho­tog­ra­phy, is their medi­um. This club has a spe­cial sec­tion which goes out and shoots as a group. It looked very promis­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to go out and shoot more.

In the first meet­ing that I attend­ed, the club had a dis­play. Some peo­ple brought in their prints and showed them to the rest of the group. I noticed that my favorite out of about 30 prints was a 16 x 20 of a rust­ed steel indus­tri­al part. To my sur­prise, the artist had tak­en the pho­to with her phone cam­era. It was quite an attrac­tive pho­to­graph and very sharp. I thought to myself, I’m in the right place.

At that club meet­ing, the call went out for con­tri­bu­tions to a month-long exhib­it the Soci­ety had sched­uled at the Napa Library. There was no selec­tion process. The first 34 peo­ple that com­mit­ted to enter­ing pho­tos were to be the exhibitors at the exhib­it. I decid­ed, why not? At the next month’s meet­ing, every­one brought two of their prints in for the group to decide which one print would go into the exhibit.

Before the next meet­ing, I took two of my phone cam­era pho­tos and had them print­ed at Cost­co. One was 11 x 14 and the oth­er 16 x 20. The total price for the two was under $10, and the pho­tos were beau­ti­ful­ly print­ed. Got two nice wood­en frames on sale at Michaels for under $40 total. I took them to the next club meet­ing for the group to decide which one would go into the Napa Library exhibit.

 

 

The club chose a pho­to of a sun­set I had tak­en while out hik­ing. Had I not had my phone with me, I would’ve missed this pho­to­graph com­plete­ly. It may not be the best pho­to­graph ever tak­en, but it held its own with the oth­er pho­tographs in the exhibit—except for sev­er­al that were of high artis­tic value.

It was the first time and prob­a­bly the last that I would ever be on exhib­it as a artist. To top it all off, the library had a recep­tion for us artists. They served fine wine (as you might expect) and very good cheese. About 80 peo­ple attend­ed. It was great fun.

The first field trip was not in the field but rather in a stu­dio. We gath­ered togeth­er on Sat­ur­day morn­ing to do micro pho­tog­ra­phy (close-ups). The actu­al shoot­ing ses­sion turned out to be not only close-ups but also tak­ing pho­tographs of objects. With about a dozen mem­bers attend­ing, we learned from each oth­er and shot each other’s props.

 

I used both my phone cam­era and my 3‑pound pro­fes­sion­al cam­era. My smart phone is the Sam­sung Galaxy S3, which has a good 8MP cam­era. My 3‑pound pro­fes­sion­al cam­era is a Sony A55, 16MP, with a 50mm F2 .8 macro lens.

Amaz­ing as it seems, the results for the two cam­eras were dif­fi­cult to tell apart. Although the rose pho­tos (the first pho­tos above in this arti­cle) are not direct com­par­isons, they’re close enough for you to tell that my phone cam­era is not nec­es­sar­i­ly some half-baked add-on to the phone. Cer­tain cell phones have excel­lent cam­eras. And the S3 is no lag­gard. The S3 pho­to is the sec­ond pho­to of the ros­es above.

There are pho­tog­ra­phy clubs all over the coun­try. If you live in a city of any size at all, you may find two or three pho­tog­ra­phy clubs to join. You’ll find peo­ple to go around and shoot with, peo­ple to learn from, and peo­ple to have fun with. I’ve already learned things from oth­er club mem­bers about pho­tog­ra­phy, things I may have nev­er learned otherwise.

It’s all about tak­ing pic­tures. Bet­ter! The best way to take bet­ter pho­tos is to get out and prac­tice. And the best way to prac­tice is to get out and shoot with peo­ple who know some tech­niques that you don’t. Thus, I high­ly rec­om­mend that if you are inter­est­ed in tak­ing bet­ter pho­tos, join a pho­to club and get out and shoot pho­tos with oth­er club mem­bers. It’s a great way to make progress and have fun too.

A good place to find such groups is at Meet­up (http://meetup.com). If you can’t find a group that suits your inter­est, start your own. It’s quite easy to do so at Meetup.