WOW Photo Club 1/21/09 Meeting

We had a wonderful first meeting on Wednesday, 1/21, in the church annex building. We had 10 folks at our first meeting with others planning to come in the future. Currently we have 18 members on the club roster. You don't have to attend the church or be a church member to belong . . . everyone is welcome. My name is Waldy Cuevas, a former CNN news videographer, and I'm privileged to be the club advisor and program director. We meet on the third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 PM in the church annex, after the always delicious WOW dinners. The next meeting is on Wednesday, 2/18. All members are encouraged to bring a photo to share with the group . . . any subject that is appropriate in a church enviroment (that you could show your mom). Photos can be any size, but 8x10's are easier for everyone to see . . . but, any size is fine. Our mission statement is to help each other improve our skill and enjoyment of photography as a hobby. Club members were asked to think of a better or more eloquent mission statement. At next meeting will be electing club leaders for the following functions:

• Club Leader
• Secretary/Treasuer (There are no club dues, but the secretary, as treasurer, would be in charge of handling the money should we ever take up a collection to buy and item for the club)
• Field Trip/Extra Curricular Planner (Activity Planner for short)

At the meeting we discussed some of the following subjects:

• Picking a club name, and by email voting we've selected the WOW Photo Club.
• We will be using Picasa 3 as the main software for the photo club, because it has many great features, it's easy to use and is well supported by Google.
• We discussed making Christmas and greeting cards.
• Waldy also had a Q&A time answering John Lindsay's questions about printing within Picasa.
• We also discussed photo sharing websites such as the Google Picasa site,

http://picasa.google.com/

and the Flickr site,

http://flickr.com/

Jim Underwood also volunteered to look into getting us access to a LCD projector as this will really help us in our "show and tell" segments during the club meeting. Thank you so much, Jim, and good luck. Here's what we've done so far:

• Chose WOW Photo Club as our name.

• Set up a Flickr group site for the club: http://www.flickr.com/groups/wowphotoclub/
• Set up this Blog (WOW Photo Club) so we don't bombard the club with too many emails. I'm new to this "blogging thing" so please bear with me as we all learn and improve it.

Please shoot pictures often, enjoy the fun and discovery of photography, and above all have fun! Waldy