Dallas Camera Club

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WELCOME TO THE DALLAS CAMERA CLUB

We Hold Twice a Month Meetings For Members and Guests

Second Tuesdays - Contest Results Videos Live at 7:30 PM

Fourth Tuesdays - Program Meetings Live at 7:30 PM

Training Before Each Meeting at 6:15PM

New and Prospective Members are invited to a Dallas Camera Club Orientation with Master Photographer and Past President, Jerry Martin.
Meet with Jerry in the back of the room at 6:15 before the Second Tuesday Meeting to hear about the rich history of the club
and learn how to best leverage the resources of the club to improve your photography.

We meet at Congregation Shearith Israel at 9401 Douglas Ave, Dallas, TX 75225

The objective of the Dallas Camera Club is the mutual entertainment and education of its members in all forms of amateur photographic art. The DCC hosts contests and events including monthly competitions, field trips, training classes for all skill levels, workshops, programs of general interest, an Annual Awards Banquet and an annual competition with the Fort Worth Camera Club. The DCC emphasizes club competition as a learning process. Importance is placed on helping the beginner, or new member, feel at ease, ask questions, learn and participate.

Members Only: Check the RESOURCE LIST if you have specific questions and want to find help from a fellow member.

JOIN RENEW CONTACT US ABOUT HISTORY

Annual Awards and Recognition Banquet
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Celebration Restaurant
Guests Welcome
Logon and Buy Tickets - Deadline to Purchase Tickets is March 31
Dallas Camera Club - 2023 Annual Awards and Recognition Banquet

Celebrating the Print 2023 Exhibition
by
Members of the Dallas Camera Club

All members are invited to participate.
Details at Dallas Camera Club - 2023 Print Exhibit

Required Sign up: To participate, members must sign up by sending their name, email address and phone number to Frank Richards f-richards@sbcglobal.net before April 3, 2023.

Exhibit Dates: May 26 – June 30
Reception: Saturday June 10, 1PM – 3 PM

Programs

Details and Future Programs HERE

March 28, 2023
Norm Diamond

Title of my talk: Photography from the Heart and Soul

What DCC members might learn from my talk:

1. Find your voice – (I’ll explain a technique that helped me).
2. A photograph should be about something, not just of something.
3. You have to be your own severest critic.
4. Show your work to others for feedback, but if you think a picture is great, don’t listen to anyone but yourself.
5. If you choose to do a project, stay with it, write about it. Send your images to galleries, museums, editors or whoever else seems appropriate.
6. Fear of failure comes at the beginning for all of us. Once you take the plunge, you are on your way.
7. The journey is everything – don’t compare yourself to others.

My Photography Biography

As a child I photographed my family and our cat with a Brownie and subsequently a 35 mm camera. However, my real interest in photography began in 1979 while on a trip to Paris. I came upon a scene in the Marais district – two children running beneath a plaque commemorating the children from that school who were murdered in the Holocaust. By sheer luck I pressed the shutter on my new Olympus OM-2 at the right moment. That photograph “165 children from this school…” was shown in the Dallas Holocaust Museum and in a local magazine. Numerous people made a point of telling me how moved they were by the photograph, confirming my belief in the power of a static image.

In the following years, demands of my career as an Interventional Radiologist confined my photography to vacations with my family. In my early sixties, I sensed growing burnout and knew that I wanted to become a photographer. I began attending workshops. One of my teachers, Jay Maisel, said in class “if a picture does not move you, how do you expect it to move me?” That idea of creating an emotional response in a photograph reminded me of the picture in Paris. I knew that I could retire with purpose.

A fine art photographer, Cig Harvey, whom I met at a workshop, agreed to mentor me. For the next ten years, I regularly emailed her pictures and we then discussed them by phone or FaceTime. She helped me refine my vision and encouraged me to find a long-term project.

In early 2015, on a whim, I visited an estate sale here in Dallas. In a nutshell, estate sales enable people to acquire the possessions of an older generation whose members are dying off. A lot of money changes hands, of course, but I concentrated on the incredibly evocative items I saw and eventually photographed. At just about every sale, I found poignancy, humor, irony, and history in the objects for sale. Two years later this series became a book, What Is Left Behind – Stories from Estate Sales. Prints from the project were shown in two solo shows and multiple group shows. As a result of the project, I realized that themes of memory, loss, and mortality interested me most.

In 2017, while walking downtown, I saw the large neon sign for Doug’s Gym on Commerce Street. Intrigued, I walked up a wooden staircase to find an old gym that was clearly decrepit, with peeling paint, a drooping tin ceiling, and a splintered wood floor. But it had so much character that it was also beautiful in a way. I recognized that the themes I saw in my previous project were also present here. The owner Doug Eidd, a disheveled octogenarian, greeted me at the top of the stairs. I told him I was fascinated by the gym and wanted to photograph it. He replied dismissively that “lots of people have taken pictures here,” implying that I would just be rehashing the work of others. Nevertheless, I bought a membership and photographed the gym itself as well as Doug and many of his members for six months. In March of 2018 Doug, because of his frailty and rising expenses, closed the gym on short notice. I stayed on to photograph the removal of all the equipment until the gym was bare. I submitted some images to Kehrer Verlag, a well-known German publisher of photo book. They liked the project and published Doug’s Gym: The Last of Its Kind in 2020. The Afterimage Gallery presented a show of this work on February 28, 2020, but its run was cut short two weeks later by the pandemic.

Since then, I have gone back to a project I now call StarkLand, that I began ten years ago. It focuses on themes of isolation and estrangement that most of us have felt at some point in our lives, and most recently during the pandemic. It is still a work in progress.

CONTESTS February Contest Images

May Contest Entry Deadline - May 7, 2023
Projected - Open
Color Prints - Open
Monochrome Prints - Open

February Winners Gallery HERE
2022 - 2023 Competition Score Sheet HERE
February Projected VIDEO February 2023 Prints Color and Monochrome VIDEO

Field Trips

DCC MARCH 2023 FIELD TRIP NORTH TEXAS IRISH FESTIVAL

Please email (lpetterborg@gmail.com) me six (6) images (1920 W x 1280 H pixels) plus any shots of members by the end of March. Thanks.

April Field Trip
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge
Make Your Reservations
April 13-16

The Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge is located near Lawton, Oklahoma on the edge of Ft. Sill. It is about a three-hour drive north of Dallas. Many of us have already made reservations at the Plantation Inn in Medicine Park, OK, but there are many other possibilities. If there is interest, I will make reservations for a group dinner at the Old Plantation Restaurant in Medicine Park for Friday night. We will for sure be meeting at Meer’s for lunch on Saturday.

This trip provides ample opportunities to photograph landscapes, spring flowers, birds, and baby animals. The refuge is small enough that you can easily and quickly drive from location to location.

Thanks to Steve Hawiszczak for Interesting Points of Interest Around Lawton, OK HERE

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (fws.gov)

Home | The Plantation Inn (plantationinnok.com)

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Medicine+Park,+OK/

Meers Store & Restaurant | Facebook