Variety Night Meetings

 Variety Night Meetings

On the first Wednesday night of each month, we sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor of love – our digital images. The evening begins with an informal discussion relating to recent photographic experiences and issues.  We then share information about upcoming photo ops, new camera equipment on the market, or photo enhancing software now updated or newly available. Now it is time to take a look our images. In doing this, we will come face to face with the creative beauty of our images and we will have fun learning at the same time. Everyone is encouraged to participate by sending in images for each of the individual activities that we will cover in these meetings.

Homework Fun: Our first sharing experience is the current month’s Homework Fun project. This is another way that we encourage you to experiment with Photoshop tools. This section is always lots of fun as we see just how creative we can be. After we have viewed the current month’s images, our fantastic leader will tell us all about the next month’s Homework Fun Project. You will have a full month to get to work on it. If you would like some help or inspiration, we will use a portion of the next SIG meeting to cover some of the Photoshop techniques that you can use for the current project. We may even provide you with a tutorial, or at least, with online references. To see examples of past Homework Fun projects, click here.

Photo Challenge: Digits members are invited to submit a photo that fits a different theme each month. Click here to see a list of the themes for each month. Photos can be taken at any time for any month’s assignment but not earlier than one year prior to its display. Only one photo may be entered. Post-processing is permitted. The photo must be indisputably true to the theme and originate with the camera. This is yet another way to learn photography, by observing what others do. During the meeting, discussion about how the assignment was interpreted is encouraged. Images will be put on the Digits website.  If you do not want yours put on the website, put parentheses around your name.  Challenge your photographic mind and skill—be creative, have fun! If you have any questions or comments about Photo Challenge, please contact the Photo Challenge coordinator.

Slide Shows: This is another great way for you to share
your images with the group. Besides having the images tell a story, you can create slide shows that bring the story to life. By adding motion, creative transitions and music, you can enhance the visual effect. From time to time, we may ask you to use some particular theme for your shows, but usually you will be free to choose any theme that appeals to you. All we ask is that you limit the show time to no more one and one half minutes.

In addition to viewing the shows at a meeting, we would like to add the shows to our YouTube video channel so that members who are not at the meeting, as well as the general public, will be able to enjoy them. If we post your show on YouTube, you will be able to send a link to any of your friends whom you would like to view the show. If you do not want to make your shows available to the public, we will show them only at the meeting.

To go directly to the DIGITS YouTube channel, click on this link. Click on any show to view it. To send a link to a specific show to others, right-click on the show and choose Copy Link Address from the menu to put the link in memory. Then compose a message and paste the link in the message.

Sharing Photos: We will finish off the meeting with a section in which we share our photos with each other. These images include both Photo Sharing images and Photo Outing images. This is not a “what I did on my vacation” project, but rather an opportunity to share images of high quality or interest through photographers’ eyes. Due to time constraints, please do not send more than ten (10) images. You can also share your images by using our very own Facebook channel. Use this LINK to open a tutorial that shows how to upload your images to our Facebook channel.

Controlled Critiques –  We will ask four of our members to be the critiquers. In addition, we are not asking anyone to send in images to be critiqued. Instead we will have some of our members send in images. All members are, of course, encouraged to send in images if they would like to, but we did not want anyone to feel pressured to do so. We feel that we will all learn from these Controlled Critiques. The exact format of the critiques will be left up to those of you who are at the meetings.

How to submit your images

Click here to go to a tutorial that tells How to Submit Images to DIGITS using pCloud. Page one contains links and instructions on uploading files to Digits. Please use the correct upload link for your images, in this case “Homework”.

Pages two and three have a procedure “How to Resize and Rename files”.  

It is important to read all pages and follow the procedures.

Submit your images no later than noon on the day of the meeting.