February 18 WOW Club Meeting Minutes

Congratulations to our club leaders elected during our meet.

· Jim Underwood is the Club Leader

· John Lindsay is the Secretary/Treasurer

· Eliza Nobles is the Activity Planner

· Waldy Cuevas was appointed Advisor/Program Director at the first meeting

A big thank you to Molly Bickford for bringing the brownies and cookies that went along with the pizza and soda. In most cases in the future there will be the normal church WOW dinner, but our substitute meal this week still hit the spot with the 8 members attending. And we grew to 11 by the end of the meeting.

Again, thank you Jim for the use of the LCD projector. It made a big difference in the show 'n tell segment. We all liked meeting in the Fellowship Hall, and I'll try to secure that room for future meeting as often as possible.

Meeting Summary

· The first portion of the program looked at navigating out club blog. This is how we'll do most of your communication so you might want to bookmark it. http://wowphotoclub.blogspot.com/

· We looked at many facets of our Flickr WOW Photo Club site, and I know you'll want to bookmark this one. http://www.flickr.com/groups/wowphotoclub/
This is a great site to show off our work, inspire each other, and exchange technical tips and ideas. Just go to this site to join. http://www.flickr.com/

· We also downloaded some photos using Picasa and did some quick editing. At most meetings we'll do a short segment on Picasa. You can downloaded the program at this site. http://picasa.google.com/

The best part of the meeting was looking at each other's photos . . . WOW, have we got some good photographers. Just to name a few, Jim Underwood had some beautiful travel photographs, Sandra Westbrook had a gorgeous shot of her dog and husband and Molly had a picture of a bright-eye cat in the field. There were many other good ones.

Future Events

· For our main event for March 18, our next meeting, Kim Davidson, will be talking to us about Family Photography. This will be a great program to prepare us for many family events such as Easter and the vacation season. Check out her website: http://www.kdavidsonphotography.com/

· For our Members' Show'n Tell segment let's bring 2 photos of our families, friends, or pets. By limiting the members to 2 photos it will give everyone time to participate. They can be photographs or digital images on CD or Jump Drives.

· On Saturday, March 14, Eliza Nobles will be leading us on our first photo field trip. She'll be posting details soon, and she'll also be conducting a survey for future events. We would appreciate your participating in her survey by "commenting on her blog" posting.

Here is an important observation. Digital photography can seem overwhelming and complicated. In future meeting some of us with laptops will offer members help in signing up for our Flickr WOW Photo Club site.

I am personally offering to come to your home and help you set up Picasa, join Flickr and set up a folder structure for your photos. We can even download some of your photos from your camera to your computer. I'm offering to do this for free, out of a sense of friendship and service in the church. I'd hate to see folks quit the club, and to see you enjoy the hobby I love provides me more happiness and satisfaction than you can imagine. Please feel free to write me at waldyphoto@hotmail.com for help or to set up a home visit.

* This offer is about helping with photography (what I'm good at), and not fixing computer problems (what I'm not good at).

Practice, practice, practice . . . shoot, shoot, shoot and have fun!

Waldy