Camera Club's 50th Member - in 10 months !!!

DG Phototraining

DG Phototraining

Woof
Suspended / Banned
Messages
5,064
Name
Dave
Edit My Images
Yes
Last April I was happy to be involved with establishing a new camera club in Barnsley - and being new we specifically set out to not do all the boring crappy stuff most clubs do and place far more emphasis on actually taking & sharing photos and knowledge

Well I'm happy to say that it seems to be working as this last week we signed-up our 50th member, and only 10 months after launching too :)

So what's so different you may ask ???

There is no Committee, no President, Secretary, Comps Sec. etc. - just a 6 person Admin Team that meets whenever needed, every couple of months and with no hierarchy

Although we meet at a pub venue every fortnight on a Sunday evening the club effectively runs through Facebook. Social media allows for far more communication, far more showing of photos and allows for last minute mini-meets to be organised by anyone; we run through a Private Members forum that has a huge amount of traffic from its members

There are NO COMPETITIONS - that's a major departure from the norm, but we do encourage image sharing and critiquing

There are talks on Photography, technique nights and the odd quiz aimed at expanding knowledge

This Sunday we have an evening's shoot in Leeds and 19 members have committed to attending already - its gonna be tripod-city lol

Anyway, just thought I'd share that good news with you and maybe a few will take something away to put a bit of fire into your own club, or even start one yourself :thumbs:

Gotta love this photography lark :D

Dave
 
Congratulations on the 50th member Dave

Sounds like a great way to run your club, I just wish my local one was run on a similar vein
 
Does sound a wonderful way to run a club, unconventional but personally I'd like that having never been involved in a photography club I can only imagine most are the same as any other club, with a few doing most the work and everyone else making the decisions...clubs by committee were a massive pain on my rather large arse for a number of years as a rugby club bar manager :(
 
Cheers guys - we still do have one problem though and its an odd one we haven't yet figured out how to solve, and its basically this...

Clearly, we still do need a plan for events and evenings so we NEED input from members to say what they want from the club so that we can try to fulfill that want, but can we get people to tell us??? Can we fk :(

We've appealed in the FB group for 'What do you want???" types comments, we've asked on club nights and we've emailed all members for any private thoughts and still Sod all reply - which is kinda frustrating

If we can solve that one then we can ensure its providing as near as poss what members actually want and hence they will stay, partake more and benefit more - so ANY and ALL ideas that can help there are most welcome :)

I might even post a new thread asking on here what peeps want from a camera club and see if that throws anything up

Cheers

Dave
 
It's a great start Dave, was there an existing 'camera club' in Barnsley as competition?

My non-competitive nature put me off camera clubs and so kinda puts me off doing this sort of thing lest I tread on someone's toes. Good luck with the planning with no hierarchy, if you can get past this bit I'm sure it'll fly. Is there any way you could run a poll requiring a compulsory vote?

I'm thinking the old training room mentality, when you ask a question to the room and get stony silence, you rephrase the question and ask 'someone'.
 
Last edited:
Interesting idea Phil

We did a Poll on Competitions and of the 21 who responded (about 35 members then) 19 said NO, so that was quite telling in itself

There are two old camera clubs in Barnsley - both run in the old committee driven, lots of meetings to decide how many sugars in a cuppa and not much photography kinda way. I helped run one of them for years but when a few keenies stopped it went downhill fast. The other one is too clique driven and again prefers meetings to teachings/shooting. The first 8 member of the new club, so the founders, were all from these two other clubs and frustrated with how they were run and how little photography was going on. It was my idea to not allow competitions and I pushed for the Facebook Group too, both from my own frustrations of the old club (and yes I was POTY and variously won every category over the years, so not sulking about comps lol)

Thanks for the input

Dave
 
I've just visited the 'local' club website and had a look at the member galleries and have to say I'm a bit shocked. Quite a bit of 'snapshot rendered to art' going on.

I've never been anti-photoshop - more 'pro photography', I'm a bit flummoxed tbh at the lack of obvious stuff like 'composition' and 'lighting'.
 
Phil V said:
I've just visited the 'local' club website and had a look at the member galleries and have to say I'm a bit shocked. Quite a bit of 'snapshot rendered to art' going on.

I've never been anti-photoshop - more 'pro photography', I'm a bit flummoxed tbh at the lack of obvious stuff like 'composition' and 'lighting'.
Click to expand...


All clubs have a wide range of abilities, maybe you saw a few newbies' images :)

Most of our members are pretty new too - here's our new website and blog for you to peek at... http://www.barnsleyphotoclub.co.uk/

Dave
 
DG Phototraining said:
All clubs have a wide range of abilities, maybe you saw a few newbies' images :)

Most of our members are pretty new too - here's our new website and blog for you to peek at... http://www.barnsleyphotoclub.co.uk/

Dave
Click to expand...
Yeah! course.

Of course all that does is suggest that Barnsley photographers are so much better than Donny ones.:ROFLMAO: What with your newbies being so much better than ours with a wealth of letters after their names.:sneaky:
 
Provide each member a card, pen and envelope with the question on it at the next meeting. Advertise that you will be doing this in the FB group. No need to id who wants what that way ... just a thought. tbh I have found foums useful for this type of research so as you have one of those I'm surprised that hasn't thrown up anything. Maybe it is already fit for purpose ;)
 
Congrat's :)

I wish there was something similar nearby for me to join.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top