Christmas Message

December 2009

We are now just one meeting away from the end of yet another year which seems to have passed even more quickly than ever.  I'm not sure why, maybe it's my age, although it's probably more to do with the fact that so much of my year is timetabled.  February to June is taken up with photographing rugby, netball and basketball.  After a holiday taking photos it's on to covering more rugby and then it’s the football season.  Add in the WPS meetings plus cycling events and training rides (oh, and work as well) and that's a huge chunk of the year gone.

Speaking of timetabling, the sports fixture lists have been published and your Committee is already planning into May 2010 so that’s half of 2010 gone already. Doh!

We are really impressed with the number and quality of Competition entries we receive every month and it is clear that this is a key part of what our Society does.  Over the last 4 years, digital images have come to form the overwhelming proportion of entries but it seems the administration process has not evolved to keep pace.

At a recent meeting, our Competition Secretary, Lyn Carlisle, took us through her workflow to prepare images for the judge; prepare and set up for the Competition nights and then collate the totals afterwards.  I won’t bore you with the details but it is, to put it mildly, time consuming.  We have decided then to try and streamline the process for the Competition Secretary.

We are still fine tuning the details but with the help of an Excel guru we have more or less sorted out the points collation and tracking.  The more noticeable change though will be a new entry form which will require all entries to follow a specific naming convention and for digitals to adhere to size/formatting requirements.  We will be going live with this system for the April 2010 competition which means you will need to be familiar with these requirements and use the new entry form when you bring your entries by the closing date of 9th March.  We will also be giving a short presentation about the changes at our first meeting on 9th February.  We are also looking at moving to an online entry procedure for digital images in the near future.

Now for a friendly warning: for the system to run smoothly unless the entry requirements are followed correctly your image(s) will not be accepted.  End of story as they say.

Keep making great images, have a happy and safe Christmas and New Year and we look forward to seeing you again in 2010.

Geoff