​This week you all have shiny new badges. Please let me know if your badge is not in the box (there were rather a lot of members whose surnames begin with W so you might find your badge is under T instead!) And don’t forget to replace your badges back in the box at the end of the meeting, I’m a great one for losing badges if I take them home.
 This week’s meeting
For this week’s meeting club member Mick Yates is talking about his photography. His presentation is titled ‘Unfinished Stories; from genocide to hope’ and will cover his photographic journey, Cambodia history and educational progress, and with a lot about making a modern day photo documentary. There will also be a group activity so it promises to be a good night.
Camera Fair - Sunday 27th October
The club camera fair will be taking place at the Cheese and Grain in Frome. Helpers will be needed from 7am until 1pm, and if you think you could help please email Loveday. There is free entry for members of the club.
Frome Salon of Photography – call for submissions
The Salon is still open for submissions, the closing date for online entries being Sunday 3rd November. There is a wide range of categories, including mobile phone, and don’t forget a successful acceptance could count towards BPE recognition. Not only can club member submit for FREE but there are 18 awards reserved for club members only. Five members have already submitted their entries so visit the website at https://photoexhib.co.uk/fromewessexsalon/login.php and get your entries in.
Frome Salon of Photography – call for volunteers
Alan is still looking for volunteers and whatever time you can give, however small, would be appreciated. Please contact Alan or me if you think you can help.
Battles
Kingswood Salver: - we are submitting a tonal panel called ‘Natural Beauty’ and the images selected are ‘Portland Seed Head’ – Jane Wiltshire, ‘Clematis’ – Lisa Rendall, ‘Three Dahlias’ – Loveday Powell, ‘Dahlia’ – David Chedgy, ‘Cherry Blossom’ – Simon Johnson. The panel was shown at the club meeting after selection and there were many comments about how lovely the set was. The judging will take place on Saturday 16th November at Bovey Tracey golf club.
The next battle is an open one with Devizes for digital images. Hand in for selection is Sunday, 13th October at the latest, and there is a section that must be images from members not in the Premier group. Please email your images. However, it is important, if you have membership of other clubs, that you let us know whether you have designated another club for your entries. If this is so, could you please email me so that I can pass it on to the Selection Team.
FWCC Website – Monthly Challenge
Don’t forget to get your images in for Challenge of the Month, this is simply intended to be a fun challenge to get you out using your cameras. There will be a page on the website designed to show members’ best photographs of the month and there will be a theme if you want to use it as a starting point. It is not essential that you follow the theme, what we want to see is your photographs. This month there is an open challenge, so send your photograph for October, sized as for the gallery page, to Andrew but remember to title your entries and give your member number, for example, RedBalloons_FredBloggs_MN123.
 
 
FWCC Website – Members Galleries
In order to showcase the full range of members’ interests and skills, the website now contains an updated gallery, where each member can display 10 of their favourite images on a dedicate page. Six members have already submitted some amazing images but it would be great to have more, so please send in 10 of your best images, sized to 1600 pixels on the long side for landscape and 1200 pixels on the high side for portrait and please let Andrew de Mora know if you wish for your qualifications to be displayed.
 
A final reminder, there is an updated price for mounting boards of £1.50 per board, £12 for 10 boards and £8 for 5, backing board is £1 per sheet. All prices compare very favourably with local sources and David Chedgy asks that you pre-order your requirements from him to be picked up on club nights to avoid unnecessary damage in transporting the boards.

On the 11th August the WCPF held its inaugural club print competition in Dorchester. Members from DCC and the WCPF hosted the event and it was a very successful day. Fotospeed sponsored the new trophy which was won by Torbay Photographic Society.
 
Thirty-nine clubs took part in which the FWCC came joint tenth. A well deserved position seeing the competition. Congratulations to all of our photographers who scored the below mentioned marks.
You will see by this link how we compared. http://www.wcpf.org.uk/media/PrintComp/2019/WCPF%20Print%20Comp%202019%20Ranked
 
The judges were: Glyn Edmunds ARPS DPAGB EFIAP/s EPSA, Jean Brooks EFIAP/b BPE2*, Caroline Colgate ARPS APAGB

Click here to see the winning images from FWCC

DON’T FORGET
Enrolment evening is Friday 6th September 2019, 7.45 pm at Beckington Memorial Hall. There will be a slide shows of members work, refreshments, and an opportunity to see the programme of events that have been planned for next season.
 
Jenny Powell
In the past we relied on volunteers to provide refreshments at break time, but in practise it often meant that members would miss part of the talks or competitions, and it was often difficult to find volunteers to fill the rota. To solve this problem, in a completely new venture, we have engaged Jenny Powell to provide refreshments on club nights. Jenny is a lady who lives in Beckington and was looking for a volunteering opportunity that would enable her to meet new people so it’s important that we make her welcome. As she is also willing to make cakes and biscuits to go along with our teas and coffees, and will use our donations to finance this, although I know that most members make more substantial donations for their drinks and homemade cakes, the committee are suggesting that we make a minimum donation of at least 50p each at break time.
*please don’t forget to bring your own cups!
 
Club outings
Our Social Secretary, Michelle de Mora has come up with a fabulous programme of events throughout the season starting with the Longleat Sky Safari on 13th to 15th September. More than 150 hot air balloons will take to the air over this weekend offering an excellent opportunity for some stunning images. In the past these outings have included a good mix of beginner/less experience members and the more experienced members offering good opportunities for the sharing of photographic knowledge and skills, enabling us all to improve our photography. If you are interested in this first event please let me know and I will pass your name on to Michelle.
 
Christmas at Stourhead
Another event that we will probably need to book up soon is the Christmas at Stourhead event, several members have expressed an interest but until we know if we can get together a group of at least 15, Michelle will not be able to start exploring possible dates. If you think you would like to go along please let me know and I will pass names on to Michelle. If you want to know more go to nationaltrust.org.uk/stourhead
​

​MOST IMPORTANT
Don’t forget that enrolment evening is Friday 6th September 2019, 7.45 pm at Beckington Memorial Hall. There will be a slide shows of members work, refreshments, and an opportunity to see the programme of events that have been planned for next season.
 
Competition themes
The first competition of the season is the Kingswood Salver and this years’ theme is Flowers. Whilst members took some stunning shots at Rosemoor, it was a beautiful day and the lighting was quite harsh. The Frome Show will be coming up on Saturday 14th September (apologies, I put the wrong date last week!) and this is an ideal opportunity to take photos of competition standard blooms in soft lighting. What is required is 5 photographs from 5 different photographers, and looking at the website it seems that the most successful entries have a theme running through them, so if you want to enter it might be an idea to get together with other members to plan a shoot.
 
Develop Your Photography Group -Affinity photo course
Phil Taylor will be running an all-day course on Affinity photo Basics on Thursday September 12th 10:00 to 4:00pm At Buckland Dinham village Hall –. There are just 5 spare places, so if you would like to join let him know soonest. The course is open to all who intend to rejoin FWCC in Sept. Each participant will be asked to bring their own laptop complete with a working copy of affinity photo + some RAW and jpg images they would like to work on. In the morning he will cover the Affinity RAW development module and in the afternoon look at improving or changing backgrounds, which will include some layers and masking.
There will be a small charge to cover costs.
 
Christmas at Stourhead
For the very first time Stourhead gardens are going to be illuminated after dark for the Christmas period. Attractions include a Tunnel of Light, illuminated with 100,000 pea lights, a fibre optic lawn, laser garden, fire garden. The price for entry is £18 if booked in advance, but there are group prices for 15 or more. I suspect this might be something that will get booked up quickly, but Michelle de Mora has agreed to organise this, if enough members are interested. Several members have already expressed an interest so if you think you would like to go along please let me know and I will pass names on to Michelle. If you want to know more go to nationaltrust.org.uk/stourhead
 
The Great Dorset Steam Fair
David would like me to remind you that this is on from 22nd-26th August and is a great place to take photographs.
 
Finally, Harvard would like to thank all those who turned up for the evening shoot at Bristol on 11thAugust and he hopes you enjoyed it, despite the rain there have been some great shots on the club Facebook page

Competition themes
The first competition of the season is the Kingswood Salver and this years’ theme is Flowers. Whilst members took some stunning shots at Rosemoor, it was a beautiful day and the lighting was quite harsh. The Frome Show will be coming up on Saturday 14th September (apologies, I put the wrong date last week!) and this is an ideal opportunity to take photos of competition standard blooms in soft lighting. What is required is 5 photographs from 5 different photographers, and looking at the website it seems that the most successful entries have a theme running through them, so if you want to enter it might be an idea to get together with other members to plan a shoot.
 
Develop Your Photography Group -Affinity photo course
Phil Taylor will be running an all-day course on Affinity photo Basics on Thursday September 12th 10:00 to 4:00pm At Buckland Dinham village Hall –. There are just 5 spare places, so if you would like to join let him know soonest. The course is open to all who intend to rejoin FWCC in Sept. Each participant will be asked to bring their own laptop complete with a working copy of affinity photo + some RAW and jpg images they would like to work on. In the morning he will cover the Affinity RAW development module and in the afternoon look at improving or changing backgrounds, which will include some layers and masking.
There will be a small charge to cover costs.
 
Christmas at Stourhead
For the very first time Stourhead gardens are going to be illuminated after dark for the Christmas period. Attractions include a Tunnel of Light, illuminated with 100,000 pea lights, a fibre optic lawn, laser garden, fire garden. The price for entry is £18 if booked in advance, but they are group prices for 15 or more. I suspect this might be something that will get booked up quickly, but Michelle de Mora has agreed to organise this, if enough members are interested. If you think you would like to go along please let me know and I will pass names on to Michelle. If you want to know more go to nationaltrust.org.uk/stourhead
 
Finally, for all you bird photographers out there, I know members have taken some fantastic images of puffins over the years and the RSPB are looking for your help. They are running a Citizen Science project to find out how the diets of puffins are changing and how this has contributed to their catastrophic decline in recent years. What they are looking for are photographs of puffins with beaks full of fish. They can have been taken any year, so long as you identify that year, and all they need to be able to see is the beak and food clearly. So if you are interested in taking part in this project please visit the RSPB website at rspb.org.uk/projectpuffin
​