The Camerazzi Community

State of the Camerazzi Address

Hi GuysnGals

State of Camerazzi Community Address: February 2011 by Pikkie Wolmarans

Hey – where are you ?
It really seems like everyone is just spent by the middle of the month – we are looking at the quietest weekend we had on both the Camerazzi Blog and Facebook page so far this year…

Love Is a gonner
The Love Is… contest results are out. Thank you for the support, participation advertising and whatever big or small, known or unknown contribution you all made towards the huge success of yet another great Camerazzi initiative. Congrats to all 26 award winners from the 180 entries received. There were some really good ones even amongst those which did not win an award and differences between winners and non-winners are often marginal – so keep entering as next time the scale might just tip the other way…

Contest Feedback
Entries received – 180; Merit awards – 10; Bronze awards – 8; Silver awards-5; Gold Awards – 3. The main reasons why some ‘GREAT IMAGES’ did not win any awards: 1) Low immediate impact, 2)Stretching the theme to accommodate an image, 3) cropped out of proportion (aspect ratio) to try and improve composition, 4) Lacking technical quality e.g. sharpness/correct exposure/colour/tonal range.

Quite a few entrants asked me for individual feedback on their entries – my response: I’d love to comment on each and every photo, but the demand for extra hours in my day exceeds the supply by far… I will however post some of the entries from which I think we can all benefit from learning in the Forum and Showcase galleries on the website for your general comments please – I will try and comment on as many as possible also.

Next theme contest
Our next theme contest will commence on the 1st of March – theme to be announced soon.

Great Shootout
Valentine’s Day shootout went really, really well, thanks to a super batch of people helping out with the organization, presentations, walk- and talks, and of course with the logistics and more substantial foodstuffs than food for thought only… Heinrich and Annette for the logistics and food supply chain; Mike, Frits, Francois and Ben for leading the walks, talks and shoots, and also Emile, Janco & Jorina for their valuable input and Shaun, Anrie, Eddie and Savannah who spent their Sunday modeling for us.
And thanks of course to you! An awesome group you were! Thanks for attending but mostly for your keen and eager participation in the activities – just made it so much more enjoyable!

I’ve had numerous requests that we should consider holding these shootouts more often and also quite a few requests from the Western Cape for a similar event in CT… we are considering the options. It is however a matter of economics, trying to keep the costs as low as possible so that everyone can afford to attend – if there is someone out there who’d like to sponsor us with 3-4 return flight tickets, we will consider CT even more serious.

Shootout Pics
Now let us see the pics you took at the Valentine’s Day shootout – posted on the Camerazzi Facebook wall at http://facebook.com/camerazzi So will you guysngals who attended the Shootout please stand up and be counted! We have received some 88 posts so far but I am convinced that there are many more out there….c’mon, show us! Submit as many as you want. All submissions will qualify for Award Certificates in different categories – however even if you are not overly happy with the quality of your crop – still post it as we’d love to see a wide as possible record about what our members were up to during the day…

Members and input
We have over the past few weeks welcomed many new members both on the website and on our Facebook page. Just another request to all our new members on the site to please comment on the photos and take part in the discussions – that is what keeps the site alive and so immensely valuable for everyone – you need not be an expert or feel inadequate – we especially need some input/comments from not-yet-professionals to keep us in solid touch with what is referred to as ‘public opinion’ on our member posts.

Newcomers
And a great cheer to the very enthusiastic newcomers (read Denis Smit & Danie Coetzee) who so fast integrated with the site activities and make such an important contribution to the knowledge base with regular posts and comments – thanks Dennis, Danie and all the other active newcomers like Lungi, Marié, Morné, Gail, Annalise, Jan and oh, so good to see you active Francois – we appreciate the time you take from a busy schedule to provide our members with some of the bests insights available in the art, science and skill of photography. Same goes for you, Marco and Amelia and a few others – we really appreciate you guys popping in and post or make a comment from time to time – we really miss your knowledge and insights when you’re not around…

Old Timers
And even a greater thank you to all the ‘regulars’ who still form the backbone of our site activities: Mike, Ben, PikkieL, Faan, Thelma, Hennie and the others (has anyone seen LeGrange lately except for appearing in the Awards list of the Love Is…contest?) – your input is essential and valuable and appreciated by many more than just posting members who actively follow the site posts and use it at a learning resource>

10 to go
I have spent the past four months of the academic break solidly on building the Camerazzi Community and I think we are doing quite well…the site membership has doubled from around 150 to 300 and the Facebook Page followers from 1 (yours truly) to 490 this morning. It feels like yesterday when I asked in November for you guys to ‘like’ the page because we needed 25 followers… Now I’m asking again: we need 10 more followers to hit the ‘magical’ 500 mark – please tell your friends and family with cameras and invite them to visit and like the Camerazzi fb Page here: http://facebook.com/camerazzi

Time’s up
Unfortunately I have to return to my lecturing job in a week’s time, (classes for 8 hours a day) and need to seriously cut back on the Camerazzi time to one or maybe two updates per day – I’ll try my damnest, but please, anyone of you can help us add value to the Camerazzi experience by regularly commenting on both the website posts and the fb Page posts and by learning the self-post thing to become an Author on the website, c’mon!

So much for now, before someone offers me treatment for verbal diarrhoea.

Happy shootings

Pikkie