Hello Club,

As Spring is evident all around us, three things are important to us as members of the club:

• Get out and photograph as much as possible! (At right is a Fawn Lily.)
  
• The Fraser Valley Invitational is almost here! This is our biggest event of the year. Fifteen camera clubs from West Vancouver to Chilliwack will join us and compete for first place with our theme of Water In Any Form. We’d love to see our club win this event this year and we’re counting on you to get creative with this topic and get your winning images in. More details about the FVI are inside.
  
• It’s time to think about how you can support your club. I’m continuously amazed at how many people work very hard to keep the club running smooth and I am forever thankful for their efforts. If you increase your involvement, you will not regret it. Our executive team is a cooperative group of outstanding people and we’d like you to join us next fall. There are many positions vacant, including
  
        President
        Secretary
        Outings Coordinator
        Refreshments Coordinator
        & more
  

If you are interested in any of these positions, please talk to any member of the executive to learn more about it and let us know you are interested.

Photographically yours,

Dennis

Fraser Valley Invitational
May 8, 2010
Doors at 6:30
Opening at 7:30

Less than one month to go to our biggest event of the year! The FVI committee meets monthly and does a lot of work in between to make this a success. We are counting on all our members to support the event by:

• being sure to attend, bring a friend.
  
• Buy your tickets as soon as possible. Seriously, please do that to help us estimate amounts of food. Tickets are $10 each or $15 at the door.
  
• Submit your images on the theme of Water In Any Form by April 15 (that’s this week!) to comps@langleycameraclub.com.
  
• If you have pictures on the water theme that will not be submitted, send them to detlef

(paintwithlight1@hotmail.com) also by April 15. He is creating a slide show for entertainment purposes. Your name will be in lights as it scrolls by at the end – instant fame just for submitting an image!

You could win a prize like this printer!

• The FVI also has a print display for LCC members only. Starting this week, Paul and Kathy are collecting prints for this. So, all members, please bring us two of your matted prints ... We will be collecting these prints between April 14 & 28th.
  

This year members will only be allowed to submit two prints … these will be displayed at the event and voted on by all who come. Great prize for the winner too!!!

Pictured below is our FVI committee of 2008, celebrating another successful event and cleaning up after a great night. Be sure to be part of the fun this year!

Gateway of Hope, update

Thanks to the members who submitted images for this project to furnish artwork to Langley’s new homeless shelter. The selection committee is meeting this week to view the images and select the ten that will be enlarged, printed and mounted or framed. We hope to have the images on the walls of the shelter within the next few weeks.

We are thankful to Urban Art who has offered to print on canvas for us at cost.

More about this as it unfolds.

Summer Camping is On!

A reservation has been booked at Conkle Lake Provincial Park, 70 km from Osoyoos, for the Canada Day weekend, July 2 – 4.

Please contact Paul and Kathy asap at neudorfshots@yahoo.ca to reserve a spot for you and your family.

For more information on this park, go to:
http://www.britishcolumbia.com/parks/?id=123 or

www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/conkle_lk/
In spite of earlier reports that the road in to the camp was pretty rough, it has been confirmed by locals that the road to the campsite is fine for all cars as long as they take it easy.

Choosing our Themes for Next Year

Can you believe it folks!!! That time of year is here again.  We had so much fun last year and there were SO MANY WONDERFUL THEMES presented that I just know that this year will be exceptional and really hard for us to choose.  So for you new members or for those who just didn’t get around to submitting ideas last year ----- well here is your chance to have a say, ---- to really be a part of our Langley Camera Club.  This is all about your input, your ideas and we really need them.  Last year we had some phenomenal choices that were voted on.  Next year we are just going to do even better --- I just know.

Here is a little part of the final synopsis from last year:

In early March, the call went out to the entire membership to submit their ideas for themes for next year.  21 members responded with 249 ideas.
These 21 members then got to pick their Top 25 ideas and these votes were tabulated and then the call went out to pick their Top 10.  20 members responded in the time frame, and we had a clear standing of the Top 8.
The 9th choice will be the FVI Theme for next year   --- Water, and one theme will be the CAPA theme.

So this year it works in the same fashion.  The call is going out as of tonight for your top say 50 ideas.  Or it can be 10 or 5 or whatever you want to contribute.

THE DEADLINE IS APRIL 30TH OF THIS YEAR, FOLKS.

Those members who send back their submissions will then be asked to vote on their Top 25 choices.  That tabulation will then be narrowed down to the Top 10 and of those 8 will be chosen, as one month is reserved for the FVI Theme for next year and one is reserved for the annual CAPA Theme.

Here’s the rub, or here’s the deal.  If you do not respond to me  rsvp1@shaw.ca by April 30th then you will not be eligible to participate in the voting for our next year’s  themes.  Simple as that.  So get your thinking caps warmed up, take a spin and let’s hear from you asap.

Thoughtfully

Rianna

A Special Message to the Club from Rianna

To My Fellow Langley Camera Club Members:

The more life changes, the more it stays the same said one wise man somewhere in time.  My life is changing and I want to let you know a little about it.
It has been a difficult year for Wayne and I, the economy crashing had a lot to do with it.  My health and surgeries certainly didn’t help.  So after much soul searching, we have decided to “git outta town.”
Some of you know that when we were first married, my husband and I spent 8 years doing a missionary work in Honduras in Central America.  Our first two children were born there.  It was a happy time, simple times.   For many years Wayne has wanted to get back into the Spanish field, and there is nothing holding us back from doing just that.  We have one son and his wife serving as missionaries in Tanzania Africa, our 2nd son and his wife went to Guyana in the jungle for 2 years, and now our 3rd son and his wife are in the Dominican Republic.  They have invited us to come and live close to them, and we have decided to go.  We have a lovely apartment that they have found for us, it is brand new, still being completed on the top floor so we will get a breeze with a huge patio all around. 

The apartment will cost us $300.00 a month.  So we are going back to our roots so to speak, 3rd world country, Spanish speaking, a simpler life, but hopefully one that will get us out of the rat race we have been in here in Vancouver just trying to eke out a living and able to concentrate more on some of the more important things in life.  The tragedy in Haiti has struck us deeply as our kids have been involved in the relief work, and while you hardly hear anything anymore in the news because the media has gone on to other horrors and tragedies, but because our children have been such a part of the relief work that in many ways is just beginning, Wayne would like very much to be a meaningful part of the reconstruction of homes etc. that will be going on for many years to come.

We plan to be gone from 6 months to a year depending on how things go for us.  So that brings us to the reason for this epistle.  In my absence, this is what I would like to propose:

I will continue doing the statistics for the club for evaluation night.  Where we are going there is very good internet connections, so it will be just a matter of having Jim send me the stats for the month and I can continue the spreadsheet statistics.
I will also continue to send out the Monthly Tips Letter that I send on the Themes.
I would also like to continue to do the Call for Evaluation Themes for the following year, get the ideas, calculate them, and post these ready for next September.

I can continue to monitor the statistics for the Chris Sheffield Awards and the LCC awards for this year. Thankfully Tena is stepping up and is so willing to help. Tena will also take over the awards that are presented at our awards night in September.

I will have to hand over to someone the job of:

- finding guest judges each month, and ensuring that we have our in house judges.
- Co coordinating the Awards night Presentation next September.
- Creating and distributing certificates for levels advancement.

Rianna

Our Presenter for April

This month we are privileged to host Mark English. Mark has been a photographer for almost thirty years. He has received several awards for his work, most recently first in class (pictorial below) at the 2007 PPOC Image Competition, with a second image (at right) selected to hang in the PPOC National Loan Collection.

Shooting principally for stock, much of his work is focused on editorial travel and landscape. He has been published in a variety of media. Mark conducts workshops locally in visual design and composition, as well as digital colour management and workflow. He has also provided instruction at workshops in France and Singapore.

Mark’s website is www.pacificlight.ca/ . For this visit to our club, he will talk about digital fine art printing.

 

Coming in May and June

There’s still lots happening before our summer break …

• Our May presenter is Derek Carlin, who will teach us about the psychology of creating a digital slide show.
  
• There will be a photo hunt, on Saturday, June 12. This is a fun event for members to

be creative with their camera and have fun together. It is followed by a BBQ. Mark you calendars for this fun day, more information will be coming.

June 16 is our Wine Down, our last meeting of the year. Yes, we’ll have wine  to drink and other things going on to celebrate the conclusion to a successful year as well as to acknowledge the hard work of our executive and to welcome new executive members.

A Little Water Inspiration

With water as our theme for the FVI, I couldn’t help but notice the work of Clark Little, a photographer from Hawaii. His wife wanted to buy a photograph of a wave for a wall in their house and he said, “Don’t buy it, I can take that!” The surfer was familiar with the rolling tubes of surfing waves there so went out with his camera and his life changed. He had such success photographing inside the waves that he quit his job and became a full time photographer. You can see his work at www.clarklittlephotography.com/.