AGM, Tom Sage and practical session

Lots of things going on with Reflex at the moment, many of which were summed up in last weeks annual general meeting. It looks like the club committee and members have been hard at work behind the scenes with planning and organising the future of the club. If you didnt make it to the meeting (like me - slapped wrists) then please take the time to read our newsletter which outlines a few changes that we all have to look forward to. As a result of feedback from members there are all sorts of new ideas being implemented, offering us a great deal of variety over the year and even more opportunities to get stuck in and participate rather than just sitting in chairs.

This week we are back to our normal meeting day of Thursday and we are expecting a presentation by Tom Sage, a photographer who worked with the Press association on Fleet street for 15 years and then moved on to work with hot air balloons. It should be interesting to hear his experiences of press photography.

We have a little advance info regarding the meeting in two weeks time on May 24th, this will be our last practical session of the season, now at the moment its all top secret and all Ive been told is that we need to bring our cameras and an empty memory card. We will be venturing outside the walls of the school, so you softie southerners will likely need big furry boots, winter coats, hats, gloves scarves ( ha - waiting for the retaliative abuse ). Oh and apparently it would help if we could all be at the club for 7pm that evening, ready to brave the weather by 7:15.

Congratulations to Mark O Grady who has had a print accepted in the London Salon exhibition on his first ever entry, its great to see our members doing well.
Mark o Gradys flickr

Our Newsletter

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been testing out a new style newsletter. A few of our subscribers volunteered to receive the new version and give me feedback on it. It’s now very close to coming out of testing and taking the place of the old text based version. In preparation for this there is now a new page on this Blog that you can use to subscribe to it if you aren’t already. If you look to the left you can see the link to that page called “Sign up to our Newsletter”.

From now on you don’t need to be a member of Reflex Camera Club to receive it. Anyone can subscribe, although there may be editions that you won’t receive if your not a club member. You’ll also find that by changing to this new style we will now be complying with Anti-spam laws from various countries around the world.

What’s different? I’ll be able to include lots more pictures, video’s and information. So instead of just reading about it and having to click on a link to see a poster or picture that’s relevant to the writing, you’ll be able to see them right inside the newsletter. When you get the first issue you may find that the pictures aren’t showing and you just have a bit of text instead of a picture, if that happens you need to add the address the newsletter is sent from to your allowed list. In a lot of email programmes, including web based email, you will see something that asks if you want to allow pictures to be shown from our email address. Please click allow, yes or always allow. Whichever of those options it gives you.

Newsletter

I’m in the process of revamping the newsletter. If your already on the mailing list you should of received a form asking you if your willing to receive and give feedback on the new format. If you haven’t agreed to that or aren’t sure I’d love you to fill it in and give permission. It won’t get you spammed by loads and loads of email rubbish. It’ll just mean you get the odd extra copy of the newsletter in a full HTML format. What do I mean by HTML. It just means that instead of getting the usual newsletter that is just text with links and headings in it. This new version will allow us to feature members photographs, posters for events that we’ve been asked to let you know about and have a good looking layout. It’s just like visiting a website but you get it sent to you via email. So please do give your permission so I can add you to the tester list. The more people that receive it and give their opinion the more likely it will be to have the content and look that will suit the majority of the club.

If you’ve deleted the email or your not actually a member of Reflex but would like to receive these test emails and continue to receive them once the new version goes live then you can sign up below.