Eastern Maine Camera Club

It’s time to prepare your photos for the 2015 Photo Contest at the Bangor State Fair! The official rules can be downloaded from the fair’s web site at the following address:

2015 Photo Contest Rules, Entry Form and Photo Tickets

If you would like to have a hard copy of the rules for this or any other fair contest mailed to you, this can be requested by calling 207.561.8300 or emailing fair@bangormaine.gov with a name, address and list of competitions you are interested in.   More information regarding contests can be found on the fair’s web site at the following address:

http://www.bangorstatefair.com/contestspremiums

Eastern Maine Camera Club members will be at Fair Grandstand on Monday, July 27^th, from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM to accept entries.  You can also mail your entries, details for that can be found in the Contest Rules. 

Every year we regretfully end up turning some entries away so please do take the time to read the rules.  The most common reason for photos being turned away is improper matting or size.  It’s really important for your photos to be matted according to the rules. Proper matting will help protect your images from damage, and facilitate the way we hang the photos. 

Photo tickets are very important and often misunderstood. We often have over 600 photos to process in one evening. This identifying system allows us to judge the photos anonymously, then quickly pull down the ticket for display, so the photographer can be recognized, without marking up your image or matt. 

Unfortunately tickets can sometimes fall off, making it impossible for us to know who the photo belongs too.  For that reason, your name and address must be on the back of the photo prior to entry in addition to the tickets mentioned above.  Missing this step causes a significant delay for everyone.

I’ve given you some key points but this is no substitute for reading the entire rules.  Please read the entire rules to help us make this an enjoyable experience for everyone.  I’ll post the link again so you don’t even have to scroll back up. 

2015 Photo Contest Rules, Entry Form and Photo Tickets

We at Eastern Maine Camera Club will do our best to answer any question and help you in any way we can.  You can reach us via email at: info@easternmainecameraclub.org. 

Now, in closing here’s a look at the adult categories for this year’s contest:

1. People
2. Children
3. Nature – the “hand of man” cannot be evident in the picture
4. Animals
5. Flowers
6. Open – any subject matter in good taste
7. Maine  -- photos that symbolize Maine and were taken in Maine
8. Maine State Parks – scenic photos taken in any Maine State Park

And, the High School and Youth categories:

1. Open
2. Maine

Good luck, but most of all, have fun!

Michael has over 25 years experience studying the birds of North America and brings a wealth of knowledge about Neotropical migrants and the avifauna of the Eastern United States. Michael has traveled extensively in the US, Alaska, Europe, Australia, South America and Cuba.  Michael is a regional business leader promoting sound ecologically practices in business and land development.

Michael maintains his own bird sanctuary on  MDI, and offers tours through his Downeast Nature Tours business.

The meeting will be held in the Senior room at Bangor Parks and Rec, 647 Main Street, Bangor Maine.  Start time; 6:30 PM. 

The Bangor State Fair 2014 Photo Contest has concluded.  You can see the results here: 

  Link to 2014 Award Summary. 

The Eastern Maine Camera Club is setting up a Macro Photography Weekend with Mark Warner.  Mark is an accomplished professional photographer.  Though his expertise is with aerial and landscape photography, Mark is very skilled in the 'up close and personal world" of macro photography.  Mark is very articulate, and an excellent presenter.  He is also very skilled at image commentary and critique, which will be a part of the weekend experience.  Your participation in the commentary is voluntary.

There will be a fee for Mark's services.  That fee will be spread out among the participants.

We will be staying at Quoddy Head Station. There will be lodging cost for those who plan to spend one or more nights. You can come down for the day.

The proposed dates are either September 5 and 6 or September 12 and 13.

If you have an interest in participating, please go to our Member Survey page and vote your preference:

http://easternmainecameraclub.org/member-surveys.aspx

Feel free to contact Don with any questions or comments.

Each season we have 7 competitions.   The subjects Open, Nature, Animals and People are repeated each season.  The Open subject is used twice, typically the first and last competition of each season.   In addition to the fixed subjects we vote on two additional "Special" subjects at the end of each season, for the next seasons.

In this years vote the winning Special Subjects for the 2014-2015 Season were:

• Barns
• Macro

Joel has created a tentative schedule for next year that will tell you the dates we expect to hold these competitions, and he has also included definitions for all the subjects.  You can find that information on our Schedule page here: http://easternmainecameraclub.org/events.aspx

Our membership also voted to reduce the number of photo's each member can enter in digital projection formats.  The limit was 2 images per member and we voted to reduce it to 1 image per member.  Here is a summary of the photos you will be allowed to submit for each competition next season:

One final item we voted on...the web site tag line.  We voted on the list of Tag Lines submitted by members and the winner was "Developing Photographers".  You can see at the top of the page that it has been updated. 

Have a great summer everyone! 

Remember that glitch with calculating averages last month that I told you all was fixed?  Well I was just kidding, it wasn't really fixed. 

Seriously, I thought I had made a mistake in the order I processed things last month, and I did some testing and everything seemed to be working just fine. Unfortuately we had the same problem again this month, which caused some of our awards to be reported incorrectly. 

So, I've done two things.  I spent the entire morning fixing the problem, testing much more thouroughly and I've created a report that highlights the changes. 

The Event Results page on our web site has been updated with the correct scores.  If you like to see all the changes look at this PDF summary:  People Competition Award Change Summary

Again, I'm very sorry for the problems.  I will keep a close eye on this at our next competition and will check them before we announce the results.  If you'd like more detail about the problem contact me.  I'd be glad to give you the gory details if you are interested.

~Kevin

Due to the impending severe snow storm, we are postponing the NECCC winter digital image competition.  The competition will now be held on February 17th at 5:30 PM at Dysart's, 1110  Broadway, Bangor.

An unfortunate glitch in calculating the averages caused a change in the awards as they were presented at the competition Thursday night.  The averages and awards are now correct on the Competition Results page. 

I apologize for the glitch. If you have any questions or see any more errors in the results please Contact Us.  I will be sending an email to members registered for our newsletter explaining the problems and how we plan to prevent them in the future.  Below you will find a summary of the changes.

-Kevin

Update Summary:

A small number of images were missing a couple scores when they were averaged, resulting in incorrect averages.  As a result 5 images have been added to the winners which causes changes in 11 of the announced awards (out of 35 total announced awards).  The changes are:  

• Black and White Prints - No changes
• Color Prints Class A – 1 change
• Dave Hacker’s “Sidney Harbor” moved into 3^rd place
• No other awards changed
• Color Prints Class B – 2 changes
• Jon Duplain’s “Window Seat” moved up to 2^nd place
• Jon Duplain’s “Little Fire Fighter” moved up to Honorable Mention
• Three images were bumped out of the awards
• Digital Projection Class A – 1 change
• Dave Hackers “Fall Reflection Image” moved to 1^st
• 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd were all moved down 1 place
• 1 Honorable Mention was bumped out of the awards
• Digital Projection Class B – No changes
• Digital Black and White – 2 changes
• Jon Duplain’s “Got Air” moved into 1^st place
• Jon Duplain’s “Help” moved into second place
• Three images were bumped back one place
• Three images were bumped out of the awards

Last night I talked about digital imagery that is comparable to what we do.  Well, today I saw some of the "other" stuff.  PSA has a division where images are more creation in post processing than capture on camera.  There are some talented folks who have a real good handle on software and a very vivid imagination or some really good adult beverage.  Many of the images did not look at all like photographs, but artwork.  They were quite spectacular. 

I can't say I am impressed enough with the concept of creating imagery mostly with software to give it a try, but I wouldn't discourage anyone either.

Another observation is how important personality is in photography.  Hanson Fong was tonights featured speaker (not Gary Fong).  Talk about a guy having too much fun!  It's him.  He is a portrait photographer, and I expect all of his shoots are packed with laughs and high energy.  His presentation was laced with good humor and excellent information.

If you're into portraiture, make sure your camera is on a tripod and spend your time humoring the clients.  All the images he showed had subjects with 'genuine' smiles (not the 'say cheeze' smiles).  His mantra is "make the woman look good and the man will pay!"  I'll bet he's expensive.

The Sox won, and it's time for bed.

I'm down in Portland at the PSA Conference.  Last night I saw the digital images that were awarded some recognition, and about half of the images that were submitted, judged, and considered suitable for "Acceptable for Competition" from which the images that received recognition were drawn.  2800 images were submitted from makers in 17 countries, and a little less than 700 were accepted.  I can say I did see some brilliantly done work.  The overwhelming majority of the images were well processed but not manipulated to any obvious degree. 

The upshot of the presentation to me is: we do work comparable to all but the prize winning images in the "Open" category.  Even then, we have work that is very close in quality and presentation.  We need a lot of work in the "Nature" category. 

The Nature images were quite spectacular.  Only about 10% of them were from 'exotic' locales (Africa, the Antartic, etc).  Many looked to be shot locally to the makers.  There were submitters from Breat Britain, Germany,The Netherlands, Australia. So to us that's pretty exotic, however the subjects were owls, raptors, and mammels similar to what we can see here. Most images appeared to be from North America.  Most of those were song birds, and raptors that we can see in our area.  There were a few dozen macro shots. Many of pretty common subjects including Tent Catepillars, and Dandilions, Maple leaves, mushrooms, and the like.

I think we should feel pretty good about what we do.  We just need to do more of it!