News – Page 20 – Poly Photo Club

New Look for PolyPhotoClub.com

December 21, 2014. Today, PolyPhotoClub.com takes on a cleaner and simpler look.

The site runs on software called “WordPress” and, up till now, had been using a design (“theme” in WordPress parlance) called Photocrati. In this first step towards modernizing the site, I’ve activated a new theme called 2015.

The beauty of the 2015 theme is that it is responsive. That means it will resize itself to look good on any size screen from a desktop to a phone and anything in between.

The site works the same as it does before except now, for desktop and laptop users especially, you’ll notice that the menu is on the left side instead of at the top and it’s easier to read.

Phone and tablet users will find easier-to-use menus too. To access the menu on your phone or tablet, press the little icon in the upper right that looks like three short, horizontal lines.

More changes are coming as I have time to work on them.

Official Election Results from November 1st, 2014

Two Images Per Member

The votes are in and a major change becomes effective beginning with our first competition meeting of 2015 on January 3rd. Each member will now be allowed two entries in the open competition each month instead of three.

The final vote count for this change was 30 yes votes and 14 votes of no. The club bylaws have been updated to reflect this change and can be downloaded here: Poly Bylaws 2014.pdf.

No Change to Dues

Two other proposals to change our membership dues, one to eliminate the $10 volunteer discount and the other to increase the dues for non-volunteers were retracted at the last minute. Changes to our dues structure requires more discussion and this issue will be revisited during 2015. But for now, our dues stay the same: $35 for renewing members who have volunteered during the previous year and $45 new members and renewing members who have not volunteered.

Competition Entries: 2 or 3?

For the longest time, Poly has allowed each member to enter three images in open competition each month. That policy worked fine when the club was smaller, but now that we’ve grown – 88 members at last count – we need to consider changing that number to two.

Here’s why this would this be an improvement:

Most members enjoy receiving feedback on their images from our judges. With 100 to 120 images entered in a typical open competition, we’re getting shortchanged because the judge has to speed through the images to finish on time, so critiques are kept to a minute or less per image. With only two entries per member, the judge could spend more time on each entry.
Judges and members become fatigued after a couple of hours of looking at photos, no matter how good they are. While members can leave when they want, the judge can’t. If the judge gets tired – and a few judges have mentioned this issue to me – images shown near the end of the competition may not receive the judge’s full attention which, again, results in an unsatisfactory critique. Fewer images means better critiques.
Because we need to vacate the PAB by noon so that it can be opened to the public, the judging needs to be finished by about 11:30 at the latest. This gives us time for our break and for the final viewing of the accepted and winning images. If we had fewer entries, we could finish judging before 11:30.Then, we’d have time to discuss some of the images during the review so that we can learn from each other as well as from the judge.

It comes down to a matter of quantity versus quality. Do we want to show a lot of images quickly or show fewer images so that we can consider each one more carefully? For members who want to share more images, Poly has a Flickr group and there are other options we can consider for critiquing each others’ images online.

There will be a formal rule-change proposal presented this month to be voted on at the October meeting. So, start thinking about how you will vote.