Poly Photo Club has a new website!

After months of work, the new PolyPhotoClub.com is online.

Why change? The main goal is to allow more members to contribute to the site rather than the two we have now, me running the site and Bob Howe maintaining the score sheet.

For now, I’ll be the only one working on the new site. In the near future, though, more members will have access.

For example, our workshop coordinator (Shelly) will be able to add events to the site’s calendar and our news editor (Jim) will be able to add news articles as often as he wishes rather than on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule,

Under the hood, our new, “dynamic” site now runs on the very popular and full-featured content-management software (CMS) called WordPress. WordPress allows us to do a lot more than we could with our old, static site:

• Articles can be added by any approved member (one who has been given an admin login) using an interface a lot like Word or other word-processing software,
• Photo galleries are more sophisticated than on our old site and easier to update,
• The events calendar is more full featured. Continue reading New Poly Website

Memory cards have no emotions. Our brain’s memory does. We are fortunate. There is something valuable in missing an image occasionally, for not having a camera at that special moment when the light was supreme, the colors astounding, and the subject captivating. It’s an opportunity to dream and to periodically resurrect in one’s memory the emotions of that missed arresting moment.

As it happens, I have more vivid, clear remembrances of a few, missed images than of those I committed to a memory card. My most memorable “missed” image goes back more than twenty years. I can still easily retrieve it from my brain. Over five hundred megapixels, human eye HDR rendition. It was at night. Yacht racing in the Pacific, several miles off the Mexican coast. A clear crisp night. A good breeze filling the sails. Gliding over smooth waters of low rolling waves.

On the eastern sky, a few degrees above the horizon, a full moon. Bright enough to fully illuminate the boat and rigging. Then the memorable moment unfolded. The breeze picked up. With it, a bank of low fog rolled in from northwest. As the fog started closing in, the moonlight projected the shadow of our boat on the wall of the approaching fog. An eerie, awe-inspiring image. Continue reading President’s Column: The Missed Image