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Nov. 2002
President's
Message
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President's Message
Bob Coffey
Last month's assigned subject, "On the Beach", proved to be
exceptionally popular. Not in recent memory have I seen so many entries,
both in slides (51) and in prints (47). I have long been a staunch proponent
of the value of the assigned
subject as a learning experience. Most photographic courses send students
out to shoot assignments, archetypically "doorways, doorknobs",
to be printed and critiqued.
Some assignments are relatively
easy, as was the October assignment. Others are more demanding and require
some real head scratching to come up with
images that best meet the requirements. And that‚s the whole idea.
Checking our shots to see which ones might fit the assignments is not
the best way to learn. By previsualizing the desired result and then searching
for appropriate subjects, working the perspective, altering the composition,
experimenting with lighting effects, and trying myriad techniques, we
learn
much more.
Years ago, my daughter‚s
photography instructor disciplined his students to include the entire
image without any cropping in their darkroom prints. At that
time, I seriously questioned this practice as it restrained creativity
in the darkroom. However, I have since grown to appreciate his rather
extreme restriction as I realized that he was trying to teach them to
do their cropping
in the viewfinder first and not to rely on after-the-shot cropping as
a crutch. The concept is simply that everything that does not add to an
image subtracts
from it, i.e., less is more.
It was great to see so many
excellent entries, especially by new members. Slides in all categories
totaled 140 entries and prints surpassed them at 145. Wow! I applaud your
efforts and encourage you to keep up the good work.
We have just received notice
that the IRS has granted the DPS the requested tax exempt status 501(c)
(3). This is excellent news and we will issue guidelines for seeking grants
and contributions to take full advantage of this in a future issue.
- Bob Coffey
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