Dear Readers...

Time to get this blog updated. Lately I've been spending a lot of time organizing several activities for my civic organization, the Pendleton Lions Club. I had the months of November and December to provide programs for at our Thursday noon meetings. (Pendleton Red Lion Hotel.) I decided to follow the general theme of photography for all of the meetings. So on November 6th and 13th, Gregg Berlie, the photography instructor at our local commumity college, Blue Mountain C.C., presented information about digital cameras and how to best use them.

Taking a Thursday off for Thanksgiving, the next program was from E.J.Harris, the staff photographer for the local newspaper, the East Oregonian. THe Club quickly came to the realization that art photography, and photo journalism as practiced by E.J. Harris, are two very different skill sets. E.J. did encourage club members to take LOTS of photos as the more you take, the more likely you are to have something really good. To prove his point, E.J. described taking some 800 photos on a recent minor assignment. In one of E.J. recent photos that he shared with the Lions you could actually see the bullet leaving a rifle.

Last Thursday I did a presentation about using a computer and some free software to manage your collection of digital images. I used Picassa 3 which I find I like a lot! It doesn't get as technical as say Adobe, but for people new to digital photography it is a fantastic tool. Being a free Google product sure doesn't hurt anything either.

Throughout the month and a half of November and December, I have been working to get interest in photography amongst club members by organizing a photography contest. To simplify things, I chose five general categories for the contest (animals; architecture, landscapes, "open" or undefined, people/sports action, and a sixth category for "Lionism.") I have received a lot of entries from club members and will be taking them to Gregg Berlie for judging tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. I think I made one small goof though. I didn't specify that members should identify which category they wanted to enter each of their photos in, and I didn't limit the number of entries per person. But the good thing is that we have lots of photos to look at and choose between.

Winners of the contest will be announced by Gregg Berlie at the Lions Christmas Party Monday night. Here are a couple of photos that I'm entering.