The year went well with good attendance at a range of different evenings. If you were there, then you'll know what I mean. We had some great speakers, including a couple of FRPS folks, some really creative stuff, such as from Mark Mumford in September and real professions such as Ian Cook's splendid presentation on sports photography in October. In case you're interested in looking up any speakers, there's a page linking to their websites on our site.
We also had Iolo Williams come to speak at the Abergavenny Theatre, which was a great success (thanks to Dennis for booking him). It's a bit of a risk doing this but it worked well in helping to keep the club running. Next year Dennis and Denise are looking at possible other speakers as they are well connected. I'm also trying to get Kate Humble, who lives over in the Monmouth direction.
There were other extra-club outings, including to a Diane Owen talk at Ross club, to Snowshill to photograph the lavender, and on a course with Nigel Forster, struggling up mountains and puzzling over assignments at the Blaenavon historic sites.
The 2015 programme is pretty much complete. The year is divided into three themes. In the early part of the year, it's about creativity, including a talk from Nigel Forster and a night to show each other some of our more creative ideas. After Easter, we move to the great outdoors, with talks from 'up North', a theme competition on the weather and an evening out and about. Then in the Autumn, it gets artistic, including a practical portrait studio session with Keith Sharples and a talk from artist Toril Brancher.
All speakers are booked. Judges are booked for the first half of the year. Member evenings are drafted, although because they are for and by you, we can change these if you wish. There are also a couple of unplanned evenings later in the year. It would be great if we could have talks from members. I had a go this year with psychology. How about you? Can you stand up for an evening and talk about something? Or even half an evening?
Come the new year, I'll be looking forward to booking the 2016 programme. If you've any ideas, desires or whatever, please do let me know.
The website worked just fine for the whole year. The most-used page of course was the 'Programme' page. Hopefully you also looked up the rules for entering competitions without causing Ken too much anguish.
The role of webmaster has now passed from Rik, who has run it very well for years, to Dave. As a part of this, the website has been re-written, with not much blood, a bit of sweat, a few tears and lots and lots of swearing. You're looking at it now. It's based on a system called 'Bootstrap', which was written by a couple of geeks at Twitter and will reformat each page depending on the size of the window. This should cop whether you are looking at it on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. If you're desperately interested in the technology of the site, there's a brief page to chew on that you can access via the site map.
It has also been structured to make it easy to find what you want, based on your purpose. Hence on the front page and at the top of every page, there are clear entry points for members, visitors, possible joiners and those just browsing around the subject of photography. At the bottom of each page is a site map, which appears when you click on the words. This is another route to all pages on the site.
It also needs help from you. First, please do chew around the site, clicking on links and seeing if it all works. It would be nice also if we could recognise each other on sight, and know a little about each other, so we need a photo and blurb from everyone for this purpose. It would be neat also if we can show photos from competitions so others can see them afterwards. If you can provide for this, it will help. If you don't want to be included in this, just let me know (preferably in a friendly manner). There's also a few links page, which I've started with some stuff. Please let me know of any other good pages to add, including if you have your own photos on a website somewhere.
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