Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, the November Landscape SIG meeting was held on December 1. Those present decided to reschedule the December meeting from December 22 to January 5, 2012 at 3:00 PM - also due to the normally scheduled meeting date's proximity to the holiday. This timeframe - 3:00 PM on the first Thursday of the month - is open if it's more convenient to our group. Please check your calendars and verify whether or not this timeframe would be a better fit for your schedule than our current 4th Thursday at 3:00 PM. We will decide whether or not to switch our meeting time at the meeting on January 5.
Please review the Discussion and photo shoot Topic list (attached) so we can discuss how to schedule them in the most appropriate order to meet our needs at our meeting on January 5th.
I would also like to suggest completing a group project of creating, publishing and marketing a "Landscape Calendar." I had planned to suggest it as a topic at our first meeting this fall, but it fell off my list. There are enough of us who don't spend all 12 months here - some are "snow" and some are "sun " - birds - that it would be most efficient to do most of the work during the months when the majority of us are here. Since I'm proposing this so late in the calendar year, if we decide to do it, we would probably want to either develop it as a 2013 calendar or make it an 18 month calendar (July 2012 - December 2013). We could set it up either for each of us to "get a month" (hence an 18 - 24 month calendar) or select the images for 12 months as a group. I will bring copies of two calendars I have published at Moore Graphic (a Surprise company) as examples of what it could look like. Dan Jacobs - you originally suggested Moore Graphics to me - could you bring your calendars as well? Since we are a Landscape SIG, the calendar should be composed of landscapes.
Practice / preparation for the January 5 Meeting:
- If you took images at either Mel Whaley's "Tempe Towne Lake Sunset" trip or the "Christmas Lights Shoot" that Brady Conn and Gary Jann led on December 6, please bring them on a thumb drive so we can view them. You may be interested in "Glendale Glitters," which has many light displays on Friday and Saturday nights. It runs until some time in January. - Practice with Hyperfocal Distance settings on your camera < http://www.dofmaster.com/hyperfocal.html >; < http://www.dofmaster.com/charts.html > as we discussed at our May meeting.
For this exercise, use the widest angle lens available to you and place the longer side of the rectangle vertically ( i.e., "portrait " orientation). Then determine how much of the landscape you can get into focus by tilting the camera forward (downward) to include something placed in the foreground (flower, rock, stick, etc.,) as close to your feet as you can; and let the top of the image float to include some of the horizon, if possible, in the background. Try several different focus points - especially one in which you select a focus point that is about 1/3rd of the distance into the part of your image that really needs to be sharp (ordinarily, the foreground and middleground). Bring your results on a thumb drive to share with the group.
- Review the attached list of topics and be prepared to discuss a) additions/deletions; b) priority c) which topics you would like to present to the group.
- You may know that Starbucks has cards for a "free song" and a "free app" each week. This week's free application for your phone is called "Star Walk" and which is a night sky map. I haven't done any more than open it up to take a quick peek, but I assume it changes to reflect the current star and planet juxtaposition. Looks like a neat application. I am guessing that you can download Star Walk free from the Apple store, but I did it from the card. I downloaded "Skyview" quite a while ago and like it as well. I picked up a half dozen cards that I will drop off at the lab on Monday.
