Photography Club

So, last June, my sister and I went to see the show by the Fredericksburg photography club, and I thought about joining. I've taken some (what I consider) great pictures ever since getting my first digital camera, and I thought it would be fun. But I'm a chicken about doing new things on my own, so I never followed up on it. I did keep the brochure this whole time, however.

I mentioned it to Jacalyn at one of our NaNoWriMo meetings and she was interested. After Christmas, I called the guy and Tuesday night we went.

It was a most interesting meeting. The guy said if we had any nice pictures of birds to bring them. I didn't realize that we would be having a little art critique there. They had a professional photographer in and he was critiquing everyone's work. Now, the only picture I brought that was worth much due to the printing was a seagull I took in Niagara Falls. It was a 4x6. Hahahahaha It had to be at least an 8x10. I didn't embarrass myself. Jacalyn brought a bunch of pictures, but they weren't mounted, which was another requirement and in the end, we both sat and watched.

The professional sat and did a critique of all 30+ pictures and left the entire club with the impression that he was a jerk. There was a picture of an owl where I swear to you, you could see the thing breathing. His reply? "If this were taken in the wild, it would have value. If it's taken in a reserve, it's not as great a shot." The poor woman 'fessed up that it was taken in a reserve, so he gave it a 5 instead of the 10 it deserved.

There were other stupid comments like that. One guy took a picture of a flock of birds flying low over the river at sunrise where some people were fishing, and the pro didn't like the color of the sky. I mean, what the heck!? You can't change the color of the sky!

His final comment was that he felt like everyone had been given a theme and they just went through their photo archives and picked out a few pictures. Um, yeah!

I had a good time, but that dude was an idiot. When we got home, Jacalyn and I fired up AIM and started looking at this dude's work on line and a lot of it SUCKED.

I'm going to join the club, and the next critique is in two months. I hope it's not another bloodbath. Now that I know what I'm doing, I plan to submit a couple pictures.