Thursday, August 13, 2009

The club met at Long Point State Park for a family picnic and photo shoot.  The weather was glorious and the food was great.  Julie Rodriguez and Chris Anderson won the drawing for the month.  Each received an 11X14 wooden frame.  Suzette shared with members that the club was able to give Audubon a little over $800 profit from the photo contest.  She also shared that she plans an informal meeting at her house to discuss ideas for the upcoming program year.

Sunset on Chautauqua Lake by Donald Armstrong

Later in the evening, Bill Smith set up a telescope for star gazing.  We even got to see a bit of the meteor showers.

Next meeting will be back at Audubon – the first meeting of our new program season.  Date:  Septemeber 10th!  Bring your best summer photograph to share at 6:30.  Business meeting and program begins at 7pm.  Dave Cooney will demonstrate some simple techniques in Photoshop Elements.

• Today and Tomorrow (July 30 and 31) – please get over to Lakewood Library to pick up your photos… (if you showed in that exhibit).
• August meeting is NOT at Audubon!  It is a family picnic at Long Point State Park.  Free admission after 5pm. R.S.V.P. Donald_Armstrong@ymail.com  by August 6th, so we know how much meat and drinks to buy. Bring table service and a dish to pass. Let Don know what you are bringing.
• Added a new link on the sidebar!  Golden State Art has mats, bags, frames, etc.

Friday, June 19, 2009
FORGET this date!  It is the OLD deadline for the Art-in-the-Woods Photography contest.  Remember this date:  Wednesday, July 1, 2009 – the NEW deadline for the contest!

Saturday, June 27, 2009 * 9:30am-1:30pm
Bring your photos to Lakewood Library to hang.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 * 6-8pm
Opening Reception at Lakewood Library

Thursday, July 9, 2009 * 6:30 Peer Review * 7:00 Program
Monthly Meeting.  Monthly assignment:  Water!  Program, Dave Wymer – on shooting the moon and stars.

Today, I received the following email from Deb Lanni regarding the Conference at JCC.  This is a great opportunity.  If you want more information, contact Deb at JCC.  Her email is listed below.

Hi, Jennifer,

I wanted to let you know that I called Marcus Edwards and left a message regarding the photo club members’ interest in attending some or all of the presentations during the UPAA symposium. Unfortunately, I didn’t call before the club’s meeting yesterday and hope that Marcus and you will be able to share the information with others by email or phone.

Bruce and I ran numbers and decided that we can offer a half-day rate of $20 to anyone who would like to attend a morning or afternoon set of sessions. Additionally, the sessions scheduled for Thursday morning (Stephen Marc and Nick Vedros) will be free.

The week’s schedule and speakers’ biographies can be found by clicking the “2009 Symposium” link on the UPAA website, http://www.upaa.org.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

All my best,
Deb (DebLanni@mail.sunyjcc.edu)

Club member Sandra Rothenberg will present an exhibit entitled Beyond the Eye, at the Crary Gallery, 511 Market St, Warren, PA.

The exhibit will open with a reception Saturday May 30th from 6-9PM. 

Show dates are May 30th to June 30th, closed Mon and Tues.  Open Wed & Fri 11AM to 5PM, Thurs 11AM to 5PM & 7 to 9 PM, Sat 11AM to 5PM, Sun 2PM to 5 PM.

Sandra says, “I would love to see anyone in the photography club who is interested at the reception.”

The website is as follows:  http://crarygallery.org/.

Bill Smith sent along this advice about DVDs:

DVD media are highly variable as to quality.

I was once given a 100 stack of cheap ones as a gift and while most worked there was a good number that didn’t.  Also 2-3 years later some of the “good” discs no longer read in either the drive that created them or other DVD readers.  Hummmm, something has to give to get a low price; I suspect it is quality.

“Working” means not only writing without an error statement from the writer but also having the writer confirm the write by doing an error-checking read of the finished disc.  Further, I open the DVD contents in Microsoft File Explorer to be sure I can see them and for photos I open the DVD in Photoshop Bridge to see if thumbnails can be created.

I have since used Verbatim +R DVDs and out of almost 200 burns I have yet to have a bad one and the oldest still read 100% OK.  This DVD disc was near the top of the quality list of DVDs by the first site below.  I also got a “highly recommended” DVD writer from the cdfreaks.com site.  Read a few of their reviews and you’ll see what separates a good DVD writer from a OK/poor one.  They even run tests of different brand media (Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim, TDK, Maxell, Memorex, …) on many of the writers and go into analysis of the burn quality. Scary.  Some “highly recommended” DVD writers still cost only $30-$45 however.

Best review sites
http://www.cdfreaks.com
 unbelievable & ruthless depth of testing, straightforward advice, can be very technical too, lots of graphs, microscope images of the laser-created pits on some reviews (lots of variability here between a “great” and “so-so” writer)!

http://www.best-dvd-burning-software-reviews.com/best-blank-dvd-media.asp
 nowhere near as complete as above but also some nice advice confirming the above site

Also if you use cheap DVDs, it might be a good idea not to put more than 4GB on them as more than a few folks on various forums state problems at the outer edges.

Bill Smith

It’s a new little coffee shop – deli – internet cafe on Third Street in Jamestown.  Club member Don Armstrong’s photos are on display there now.  (How long will they be there, Don?)