2019 Awards Gala at the Scarlet Regency Cabaret

What a great celebration of photography at our seventh annual Awards Gala!  The Scarlet Regency Cabaret was decked out in it’s finest speakeasy decor – all bathed in warm glowing red light. Art deco lamps, feathers and many nostalgic accessories were strewn around our night club. Even a table was dedicated to the display of cameras from years long past.  Music and videos of the 1920’s & 30’s were streamed through our AV equipment. Best of all, many members donned period costumes to make the evening feel quite authentic. And food, glorious food, overflowed our serving tables – a treat for every taste bud. Thank you to everyone who participated in this event to make it such a "roaring" success.

We started a bit early this year so that it wouldn't be too late when we were eating.  Two slideshows came before the meal – the first was a gorgeous scenic show from Gilles Bisson on his trip this past summer to Newfoundland. Following that, we up-tempo'ed the music and saw a spirited interpretation by our members of the month’s theme challenge -’Round the Bend! The later set of images have been uploaded to our public Facebook page for your review.

Following our meal, the audience was introduced to their hosts for the Awards Presentation, fresh back from a trip to New York.  Luckily they had a great camera crew along with them for their trip, consisting of Chris Ward, Mike Montgomery and Dave Robinet.  The rest, well if you weren’t there, you will need to hear from someone who was.  David Gilbert & I did hear a lot of laughter going on, prior to our entry!


Then we got down to serious business – namely, handing out well-deserved awards in 23 categories of photography.  For each of our award categories, we had four competing images. The winners and runners-up will be posted on our webblog shortly. In addition, I will be posting the full awards presentation slides on our Youtube channel.  In total, 21 individuals took home awards hardware.

About half way through our awards show, we paused to watch a 7 minute review of everything the club has been up to, over the past 12 months.  It was fast paced and backed by up-beat cabaret music. And finally, the awards show ended with a little “soft shoe” from David & myself - with a little help from some well know performers from the 1920s – 1940s.

At the end of the night, I was actually awarded with a trophy as Best Club President – the first thing that I’ve won in seven years at the club.  Not sure exactly who my competition was though, seeing I’ve been the only club president over that time frame!  The trophy was appropriately filled with Smarties – I heard somebody say something about “smarty-pants” or something like that!  I do, very much appreciate the heart felt sentiment. Thanks to you all.

Here are the 2019 winners of the respective award categories:

Award	Winner	Image Title
Use of Colour	Mary Robinet	Umbrella Haven
Candid/Portrait	Ian Dickinson	Proud Mother
Wildlife/Animal	John Dufour	Out Foxed!
Shallow	Janice Ruggles-Bolton	Three Little Chicks
Nightscape	Dave Tugwood	Night Reflections
Fall Splendor	Joanne Arbuckle	Morning Mist
Funniest Foto	Joseph Leduc	Long Exposure
Urban Life	Leonard Buffett	Urban Transport
Architecture	Mags Kandis	City Tribute
Slideshow of the Year	Larry Tayler	Tasmanian Grace
Monochrome Plus	Marilyn Sprissler	Towering Sanctuary
Photographic Print	Don Taylor	Nepal Holy Man
Feathered Friend	Daphne Creasy	A Bird's Eye View
Winter Scene	Joseph Leduc	Mush!
Abstract	Margaret Liddon	Enchanted Forest
Use of Texture	Paula Martin	Checkers
Classic Composition	Deb Walters	Motherhood
Macro	Don Taylor	Swallowtail in Flight
Use of Space	Bert Jenkins	Mystery Island
Floral	Gail Hamilton	Tulip Classic
Landscape	Mike Montgomery	Mist Rising
Use of Light	Alan Jenner	Daybreak

The major award of the night – Photographer of the Year – was awarded to Gilles Bisson.  Gilles was very deserving of the award, consistently producing exceptional images throughout the year, while actively participating in many of our theme challenges and outings. In addition, he assisted with club presentations and member slideshows over the course of 2019. Congratulations to Gilles.

Our Theme Challenges for the coming two months are – Picture Perfect for December and Structurally Speaking for January.

We wish everyone a very safe, happy and healthy Christmas and holiday season.

November 3rd Meeting

Our November photo club meeting saw a full house in attendance to see photography from over 40 of our talented members. Our pre-announced agenda had to be re-jigged due to a family emergency by one of our planned presenters. That allowed me the opportunity to address a subject I named Participaction – extremely grateful of the fantastic participation rates, but still wanting for more!  I got to discuss the on-going issue of watermarking (where’s Waldo?), file sizing file naming, and the image submission process.  If you want to follow-up on any of this, visit our Youtube Channel to review the presentation.

Our outing for last month was entitled A Day in the Life of Prince Edward County and 31 members participated on that wonderful Thursday, October 10th. All corners of the County were fair game and certainly not just the normal tourist haunts. A lively, albeit somewhat lengthy, slideshow was shown up on the big screen.

Next up, we had a bit of fun with the assistance of 4 very capable members who participated in our Processing By Others segment.  It was introduced by none other than Ansel Adams (from a 1983 BBC interview clip).  Joanne Arbuckle, Terri Korkush, Don Taylor and Alan Jenner each took their turn at discussing their processing of raw images from each of the other participants. The end results all looked great, but often quite different even though they all had the same starting point.  Good fun!



Following a short break, Ian Dickinson presented us with one of the best audio tracks for a slideshow with a rendition by Ella and Satchmo of Summertime.  We also got to see some great images that Ian collected from his treks this past summer both locally and from Canada’s East Coast.

Next up was me again, this time talking about how to become a real Sharpshooter.  This short presentation will also soon be available on our Youtube Channel – go on YouTube and search for “Countyfotoclub”.

The final slideshow of the night was an extended dispay of Autumn Splendor - our theme challenge for the month. Thirty-nine of our members submitted many beautiful images that captured this great time of year in Southern Ontario. These images, as well as A Day in the Life of PEC have been uploaded to our public Facebook page for your review.

Our upcoming themes were handed out – Round the Bend – Circles & Curves for November, and Picture Perfect (anything from your vast portfolios!) for the month of December.  Our outing this month will be at the Trenton Air Museum on Sunday Nov 10th.

If you haven’t already, please don’t forget to get a ticket for our December 8th Award Gala and Gourmet Buffet.  Let us know and we will save you a seat – and bring along your spouse or a friend.  It’s a social event to honour our very best fellow photographers -  all with a unique 1920’s Cabaret backdrop!

October 2019 Meeting in Review

The October 6th meeting got off to a roaring (think 1920’s) start with a discussion of our upcoming year-end Awards Gala and Gourmet Buffett.  This year we are going to time-travel back to the early part of last century with a Cabaret theme for the event.  The event will be held on Sunday December 8th at the infamous Scarlett Regency Cabaret in Picton – known, more recently, as the Parish Hall at St Mary Magdelene Church! We will have a lot of fun transforming the surroundings and encourage you all to put your own spin on the evening by donning an appropriate hat, boa, plume, etc.  Tickets are now on sale ($10/person and we encourage you to invite guests). It is sure to be the photographic social event of the year here in the County.  We will get to see and reward some fantastic photography with over 20 award trophies hanging in the balance.

Ramesh Pooran was the night's first presenter, telling us how to photograph Star Trails. His material really hit home when he followed it up with two short but highly impressive light trail/time lapse videos.


Next up was a walk around the park – so to speak.  Our outing last month was to Charleston Lake Provincial Park (about 20 minutes nirth of Gananoque).  Although only eight of our group made the trek, it was a location well worth the trip with lots of small islands, caves and rocky shield features.

Bert Jenkins next provided us with a discussion of Workflow as it relates to his photographic routine. Capturing the image was step one, followed by three separate processing steps – raw processing, post processing and creative processing. Oh, it all sounded so simple!

Following a short break, we got to enjoy some fantastic photography from the sunshine state of Florida.  Bill & Gloria Sprung presented an enthralling slideshow as a parting gift to our club – they leave very shortly for their winter home in the deep south!

I next took centre stage, with an discussion as to how I go about generating the Audio Tracks for our many club slideshows.  I actually used Bill & Gloria’s Florida Greetings slideshow as an example and discussed the tools and techniques that I employ.

Our grand finale was the Texture theme challenge slideshow to which 37 of our members submitted images. Texture is yet another creative element that we, photographers, can use to enhance our imagery. These images, as well as the Charleston Lake ones have been uploaded to our public Facebook page for your review.

Our upcoming themes were handed out – The Splendor of Fall for this month of October, and Round the Bend – Circles & Curves for November.

September Meeting

Our first session of the Fall season was very well attended and featured the works of 38 of our participating members. For this meeting, people were asked to bring along their cameras for a fall cleaning, as we had our semi-annual sensor cleaning clinic in high gear – thanks to the presence of our resident expert – Douglas Banks. We took advantage of his presence by having him talk to us about how we should care for our precious image recording devices. Douglas did a great job and even displayed actual sensors taken out of various types of cameras - from full frame, all the way down to a cell phone- interesting to be sure!



Our first slideshow of the night featured the works of 12 of our members who made the trek up to O’Hara Mill Homestead & Conservation Area this past month. It’s a wonderful pioneer village setting with many vintage buildings, implements, mill, covered bridge and attendants dressed in period costumes. Coupled with great light, the images were impressive.



Joseph Leduc was our next presenter, with a talk on various ways to creatively use Neutral Density Filters. Silky water, streaked clouds, making people magically disappear, panning, fireworks, and many other uses for neutral density filters were discussed and demonstrated with Joe’s impressive imagery.





The second half kicked off with a bang – well multiple bangs actually, from a Fireworks slideshow that featured 12 of our members. Coupled with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, it was a bang-up show, so-to-speak!


With a Texture theme challenge on the table, Margaret & I thought it appropriate to present our thoughts on Photographing Texture. I did the “how-to” stuff, while Margaret demonstrated the artistic side, stressing compositional considerations while showing numerous examples of great texture shots from past member submissions.



The evening ended with our theme challenge slideshow entitled The Power of One! The theme was intended to have our photographers simplify their imagery and concentrate on one core subject per image. 32 members answered the challenge with really creative imagery. These images, along with the Fireworks and O’Hara shots have been posted to our public Facebook page for all to see.



The theme challenge for September’s is Texture, while our October theme is entitled The Splendour of Fall. Both the Neutral Density and Photographing Texture presentations will be posted to our Youtube channel very shortly.