Message from the chairman
Hi, everyone
It feels as if it was only the other day that I wrote my last, urgent, letter from the chair and unfortunately not much has changed in terms of the urgency – so I will have to repeat myself to some extent; apologies in advance.
But at least this much has changed: it is finally spring*, and I, like most of you I am sure, will have completed my vaccination cycle by the time this goes live. Which is great news for my, and your, cameras: time for some outings! Anybody got a great idea for an outing? Hit us up at our usual email. (Please just remember to keep wearing your mask, not just as a courtesy, but also to minimise the chance of becoming a link in a long and awful chain of COVID-19 propagation.)
*with apologies to our overseas-based members who are staring down the barrel of Autumn: Lynn and John, I see you 🙂
AGM
7PM – 26 September 2021
This month we have our annual AGM which ends the club year and immediately ushers in the new club year. If there is one meeting in the year where your attendance would be important to club affairs, this is it – please can we try for as large a turnout as possible?
Please note the meeting will start half an hour earlier, but if you are running late, don’t let that stop you – I will set the meeting that you immediately join without needing to dawdle in the ‘waiting room’.
COMMITTEE
As mentioned last month, we have some critical vacancies in our committee. Perhaps I should just copy-and-paste here, as nothing has changed since then, i.e. no-one has contacted me in this regard:
The gaps we most need to fill at this stage on the committee are:
Chairman(we have found a willing candidate for this position!)- vice-chairman (should be someone with enough committee experience to be a back-up to a new chairman)
- secretary (at this stage Maureen is secretary, but as she is also editor it makes sense to get someone new on board as secretary: currently the role mainly involves drawing up the minutes of the meetings, but if it became a standalone portfolio then the secretary could also deal with communications to and from the club Web site, which for a long time has been one of the club’s weaknesses)
- 2nd digital convener: this is a traditional role that has fallen on the wayside in recent years – basically the second convener just needs to know how the digital convener collates and ‘spreadsheets’ the monthly submissions, in case he/she needs to step in while Derek goes gallivanting off to Kgalagadi.
- Web site – currently I am doing this as a hang-over of creating the site, but would still be happy for someone to take on the role of putting up the monthly winners and gallery images (I put these up on the Flickr account, so it would be a simple matter of picking the winning images from there and resizing for the Web site).
Let me stop there – obviously the first two positions are the most important to fill at this stage, but for those who wish to nudge their way into committee activities more gently, please give the others a consideration!
If you are keen to join the committee, or simply feel that yes, it is time you took a turn, please let me know ASAP! Any questions from the hesitant and curious will gladly be answered.
INTERCLUB
As mentioned at the meeting, we will be doing our main selections of images for interclub on 9 September, with a quick follow up after our monthly meeting to see if any of the September submissions were good enough to shoe-horn in as well. Massive thanks goes to Jane for collating all the qualifying images in three separate tiers and to Derek for having already made the corresponding folders of images available for me to download.
Please note that if any of your images are selected for interclub, we will be sending you release forms to print out, sign, and scan/photograph and send back. It is imperative that you get these back to us as soon as possible.
Please note: there is the caveat that, while your image will have made the selection, it might still be dropped if there is a better/more representative image to replace it from the September submissions.
That’s it till the AGM – warm regards and wishing you a happy spring!
Peter
From your editor
I always love personal photographer stories, so here’s one from Coral – thanks so much, Coral, for sharing this with us.
The theme was Black and White.
“AH! Good!” I thought. “A ray of golden light across (white) the working of a pocket watch, with all the cogs in shades of shadows.” I had the watch, but the problem was opening it.
Various friends, jewellers and advice had me heading for a watchmaker in a distant town – thank goodness for maps! My encounter with the “specialist” was a whackjob – never stopped talking of their family tree, qualifications and various spiritual and healing beliefs, and that was only the wife! Somehow I explained my need and an hour later I returned to find a polystyrene bakkie with all parts of the watch stacked in neat piles around the edge. Clearly, this was not my vision! It was decided that the watch – a collector’s item from the 1800s – should be reconstituted. At a cost of R4000 and a delay of three months!!
Photography is an expensive hobby.
Winners of Image of the Month
Winners of the Theme Image of the Month
| Evaluation of Digital Photography | |||||||
| Digital Entries | |||||||
| Title | Category | Author | Star | Score | Award | Points | Pic of Month |
| Free State Winter | July entry | Maureen Miller | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| 2×2 | Wildlife | Didi Franklin | 2 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| alert | wildlife | Lorne Sulcas | 4 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| Arctic Aurora Beauty | Open | Dante Parisi | 4 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| Baobab evening | Pictorial | Maureen Miller | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Careful back there | Wildlife | Geoff Jamieson | 4 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Cautious | Wildlife | Geoff Jamieson | 4 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Contemplation | nature | marielouise cardwell | 2 | 12 | COM | 4 | Yes |
| Crop fields | Pictorial | Lynn Toms | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Dreamy Poppy | Pictorial | Lynn Toms | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Dutch Iris | Open | Ceridwyn Jamieson | 3 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| Early bird | Open | Peter Franklin | 3 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Exploding Numbers | Open | Karyn Parisi | 4 | 12 | Gold | 3 | Yes |
| Fiscal Shrike | Open | Ceridwyn Jamieson | 3 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Fynbos View | Landscape | Derek Goldman | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| gathering greens | nature | Coral Surtees | 4 | 7 | Bronze | 1 | |
| Heading for Suez | Pictorial | Maureen Miller | 3 | 8 | Silver | 2 | |
| mmersed in a mystery | Portraiture | Betzi Pierce | 3 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| Kgalagadi thirst | wildlife | Lorne Sulcas | 4 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| Loves me, loves me not | Wildlife | Betzi Pierce | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Marshall Eagle Flight | Wildlife | Karyn Parisi | 4 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| nighttime at the diner | open | Peter Brandt | MB | 11 | Silver | 2 | |
| Nyala | Open | Jane Bursey | 3 | 8 | Silver | 2 | |
| On The Beach | artistic | Coral Surtees | 4 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Pesky flies | Wildlife | Jane Bursey | 3 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| radiant | portrait | Peter Brandt | MB | 11 | Silver | 2 | |
| Ready Loaded & Waiting | Monochrome | Dante Parisi | 4 | 12 | Gold | 3 | Yes |
| Red sky at night | Open | Peter Franklin | 3 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| Reflections | Abstract | Evelyn Lyle | 4 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Taking off! | nature | patrick cardwell | 2 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| The Cape Buffalo | Nature | John Engle | 1 | 9 | Gold | 3 | |
| The Elephant’s Eye | Nature | John Engle | 1 | 9 | Gold | 3 | |
| The Stretch | Nature | Derek Goldman | 3 | 12 | Gold | 3 | Yes |
| Whack a mole | nature | patrick cardwell | 2 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Winter Grandeur | Nature | Didi Franklin | 2 | 12 | COM | 4 | Yes |
| Evaluation of Theme Photography | |||||||
| Digital Entries | |||||||
| Title | Category | Author | Star | Score | Award | Points | Pic of Month |
| Basking in love | Theme | Betzi Pierce | 3 | 12 | Gold | 3 | Yes |
| Bridge over water | Theme | Lynn Toms | 3 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Cold dawn | Theme | Peter Franklin | 3 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| John | Theme | Peter Brandt | MB | 10 | Bronze | 1 | |
| Lenore | Theme | Coral Surtees | 4 | 8 | Bronze | 1 | |
| Man in the Moon | Theme | Derek Goldman | 3 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| On point | Theme | patrick cardwell | 2 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Parade | Theme | Kate Graham | 1 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Prayers For India | Theme | Karyn Parisi | 4 | 12 | Gold | 3 | Yes |
| Reaching for the Sky | Theme | Maureen Miller | 3 | 8 | Silver | 2 | |
| Sailing in a Gondola | Theme | Ceridwyn Jamieson | 3 | 10 | Gold | 3 | |
| Scat This Is My Water Hole | Theme | Dante Parisi | 4 | 11 | Gold | 3 | |
| tussle | Theme | Lorne Sulcas | 4 | 10 | Silver | 2 | |
| Venice Street Scene | Theme | John Engle | 1 | 9 | Gold | 3 | |
| Wheels | Theme | Geoff Jamieson | 4 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
| Winter Labours | Theme | Didi Franklin | 2 | 9 | Gold | 3 | |
| Zebra | Theme | Jane Bursey | 3 | 9 | Silver | 2 | |
Salons
Salon dates for 2021 Salon dates for the following year are available from the PSSA website under the tab Salon Calendar and Results for the Year Ending June 2021, or from www.photovaultonline.com
All the brochures containing details are available on both the PSSA and Photovault websites.
Themes and Outings
Click here to view our themes and outings for 2021.
Formats and sizes of photo submissions, and naming conventions
Click here to find see the specifications for digital and print submissions.
Our committee
Click here to view our 2021 committee or to get hold of them.
