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Seven Hills Camera Club

For Photography In Central Massachusetts
Last Updated: May 7, 2008

* * * Club News... * * *

Our next meeting...

About 7HCC - originally called the Photo-Color Club of Worcester, the founding members formed a non-profit organization dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of color slide photography. The first meeting was held on April 20, 1946. Check out the "About 7HCC" section of Club Clicks on the left-side navigation panel for more.

This Month's Camera Club Photo Exchanges

Here, we celebrating the sister camera clubs of Worcester, England and Worcester, MA with a periodic photo exchange. Click either image to see more.

How about a $1.00 Camera Anti-shake System for your camera bag?

Saw this tidbit on the internet and thought we should pass it along. Click the image to go to the site to view it. What exactily is it? ...check out the string coming out of the bottom of the camera. Should we all have one? Why not?

West Boylston Invites Artist To Exhibit

West Boylston is seeking artists that would like to reserve sales booth spaces for the West Boylston Bicentennial Arts Festival on September 20, 2008.

The West Boylston Arts Foundation (WBAF) was established last year as a result of budget cuts to the School Department which eliminated the arts programs in our schools...the main goal West Boylston Bicentennial Arts Festival will be to raise funds to continue to assist the arts program in the schools. All our Festival proceeds will be dedicated to the school arts programs. The Festival will include artwork sales, music, and cultural performances throughout the day and into the evening.

The Bicentennial is a major event for West Boylston with happenings ongoing throughout the year. The West Boylston Bicentennial Arts Festival will be a part of a weekend celebration culminating with a parade and fireworks the following day.

Photographers of the Seven Hills Camera Club are invited to participate. Click here for the Festival's Artist Registration Form and Call for Artists.

Nice Work, Nan!

Congratulations to Nan Ginns for her image, Wonderland, which took Third Place in the Black and White Category in Worcester Magazine's recent photo contest.

Click the image to view a larger version.

Some of you may recall that Nan won an Honorable Mention in last year's contest for her Flying High 2.

Multiscreen Challenge

Well, the next challenge will be to get all of us there on time. Look for directions here; they'll be posted as soon as we get them. Normally, you can walk in to the Multiscreen at about 7:00 PM, but if you are setting up or participating as a scorekeeper, then you need to be there sooner. Perhaps 6:30 is best. With the traffic flow around Providence, RI a question, some of the club members are planning on carpooling early. Call around if you aren't sure, but a safe bet is that some will be leaving the church parking lot in Worcester at about 5:00 PM. Others will be at the Park-and-Ride in Millbury near the entrance to the Mass Pike.

The Multiscreen will be May 9th. It's usually a lot of fun and there should be lots of terrific images to be seen. It's being held at the regular PSRI meeting spot:

255 Atlantic Ave. Warwick, RI

Click here to see a map on their site.

NECCC Report Card

Results are in for the year. Congratulations to Michelle, Carol, and Joe for winning ribbons throughout the year in these competitions. Read Carol's complete report below.

Dagmar's Exhibiting!

Our own Dagmar Dankova has her images in an exhibit at the Wellesley College Botanical Gardens. The exhibit is called, Glass House. Click here to read more about it.

Hunt's and Zeff's

We've received postal mail, recently, from a couple popular photo store in the area. Hunt's, in Melrose, is hosting a 2-Days Only demonstration and sale. They will have free seminar by the New England School Of Photography during the two days. Zeff's, in Belmont, has announced their Early Summer Seminars.

Next Time...

May

Note to newcomers - our meeting will be on the 21st, 7:00 PM, Merriman Hall, United Congregational Church, 6 Institute Road, Worcester.

The next meeting is our last for this club year. The banquet will start at 6:00 PM (with setup at 5:30. We will have some business we'll discuss before the regular meeting. Mostly, this will be voting in our officers for next year.

The regular meeting, where we'll have Gary Stanley as our speaker, will start at 7:00. As always, the public is welcome.

Here are some notes from Gary’s website...

"As a professional nature, landscape and wildlife photographer, Gary has been leading photo tours, and lecturing on photography since 1990. He has photographed seriously for over twenty-five years, and has spent over five years as a general manager of a large camera shop working with everything from camera repair to Photoshop and camera sales. What that means to you is that Gary has the skills and understanding of both photographic technique and the mechanics of photography."

Last Time...

April's Meetings

Our Friend Ron Pays A Visit

April 16: Ron Rosenstock was our guest speaker at the regular April meeting. He brought with him stories about how he got started in photography, where he taught, and how he got into leading tours. Mostly, though, he entertained us with a terrific slide show of recent images made with his new found passion, digital photography.

April 2: We spent the entire meeting going through our collection of Multiscreen images and selected the 24 images we need. Members whose images were digital were told to get them made into slides. Next step...WIN BACK THE TROPHY!

April 16: Ron Rosenstock was our guest speaker.

March

Pat Persson, our club President, made an appearence after having been away, recuperating from surgery. She looked well and spunky. The recovery worked! Glad to have you back. Pat talked about upcoming events and then turned the meeting over to Carol Morocco who described the two shows we were about to see. The first was the commentary from the Worcestershire Camera Club in England as they reviewed about 45 of our images. The comments were well thought out and the concentrated more on impressions - how the images affected them - than on critique. The second show was our return effort. We had some of our members review 60 images in more of a camera club critique/judging manner. The contrast between the two styles was notable. Problems with sound and screen brightness affected our program. Somehow, the Worcestershire effort seemed more visually and audibly enjoyable. Our show was desgined for TV playback using a Video DVD. The Worcestershire show was produced using everyone's favorite, ProShow Gold. Together, the programs ran for about two hours...so it was a full evening.

Going Digital...

Our Digital Meetings

Next Digital Meeting: 7:00 PM, Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at the Banx Room of the Worcester Public

Note: If you go to the Worcester Public Library website (just do a Google search on "Worcester Public Library"), and click on Meeting Rooms, you'll see what night we have reserved. For convenience, we've added a link in the navigation panel on the left.

Well, we had our monthly digital meeting in the Banx room Thursday the 10th of April. While not heavily attended, I believe informative information was discussed.

I covered a series of topics starting with shooting and assembling panoramas.

To shoot a panorama, you first meter with your camera to determine shutter speed, aperture, and film speed. I normally select my ISO and aperture and let the camera tell me what the shutter speed should be. I then switch to manual mode and dial in those settings. Next, I shoot the scene making sure I overlap important features at the edges of the image.

I assemble the panorama using Photoshop CS3. CS3 seems to do a superb job of assembly and blending of the images.

The next topic was the NIK Color EFEX split neutral density filter. This filter is great at improving images where the upper portion is brighter than you wish. The filter gives as much control as a hand held split neutral density filter with the additional control of the density of the filter. I have also found that I can use the filter on any number of images.

Noise removal was discussed using Adobe Lightroom. Using an image as an example, it was demonstrated what could be done while sharpening the image.

Carol Morocco brought in a copy of a 25 minute CD the Worcestershire Camera club produced of their trip to Vernon France.

We will be looking for presentations or suggestions for the May Digital Meeting.

-- Don Roberts

* * * Across The Pond * * *

About Our Image Exchanges With Worcestershire Camera Club

Monthly Exchange

If you read the piece at the top of this web page, you know we've started a new monthly photo exchange to better share information about our locales. Thumbnails in the feature column (right side) will get you to the pages. The two clubs will have slightly different presentations of the images, but each site will show both. It's a nice way to learn a bit more about one another.

Anytime, All-the-time, Photo Exchange

We also are starting a more ad hoc image sharing/critiquing site using wiki technology. Wiki is probably best known because of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia-like site whose information is generated by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. The idea is to make a site freely updateable (is that a real word?) by anyone with the hope that, the massess will collectively keep the information honest and accurate. In our case, we are using Wetpaint.com to host us. It's free and it looks like it may be fun. The first two images are up and we're looking for folks to give it a shot. You don't have to be a registered Wetpaint user to view the site, but you do if you want to upload or make comments.

Give it a try. Here's the link: http://worcester-shire.wetpaint.com/

There's even a discussion forum. The website page is busy because it's advertising based, but you should be able to find what you need.

* * * Art & Photo Exhibits * * *

Three Concurrent Exhibitions

March 20 to June 15, 2008

A Trio of Exhibits Explore the Human Condition

More information is available here. Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography is presenting images by Lili Almong, Linda Butler, and Stella Johnson.

This sounds like an excellent idea for someone who's interested in organizing a field trip!!!

* * * Club To Club * * *

NECCC Report

NECCC Circuits and Competitions

Results are in for the third and final competitions of the club year. Congratulations to Michelle Fontaine for winning an Honorable Mention ribbon in the Pictorial Electronic Competition for her image "Jellyfish". Though our club finished in the lower half of over 30 competing clubs, we did well considering this competition is still not divided into AA, A and B divisions, and we compete with the very best clubs.

In the Color Print Competition, the club also finished in the lower half of 30 competing clubs, but again this is still a good showing considering this competition is also not divided into divisions.

In the final Color Slide Competition, Joe Zwirblia won an Honorable Mention ribbon for his image "Works of (Street) Art" and Carol Morocco won a Second Place ribbon for her image "Path to Door, Tuscany". Also, strong scores for Fran Audette and Jim Parella help the club to a First Place win in this competition and a Second Place overall final standing in Class B of the Color Slide Competition. JoAnn Audette, Carol Morocco and Seth Ribe each have slides eligible for the Color Slide of the Year Competition to take place this summer. For more information and to see some of the winning images, go to http://neccc.org/New_Outline_4.htm

Congratulations to our award winners! Thank you to all our members who were willing to contribute their images throughout the year to keep our club not only active, but very competitive. A special thanks to Don Roberts who does the selecting and mailing of images for the Color Print Competitions. Your help is greatly appreciated!

Don't forget the NECCC Conference on July 11-13, 2008 at UMass Amherst. Congratulations to Mary Colburn who won the courtesy enrollment for our club. I look forward to seeing Mary and several other club members there for a weekend of fun and learning!

Multiscreen

New Subjects For Multi-Screen 2007-2008

Images must be made after May 1, 2007.

Broken	Celebration	City Lights	Cracked
Crowd	Downtown	Failure	Glowing
Graffiti	Hat(s)	Lace	Orange
Peaceful	Pets & Their People	Relaxing	Rustic New England
Scary	Skimpy	Square(s)	Stormy
Teeth	The End	Wall(s)	Wildlife

* * * Things You Might Want To Know * * *

These are some emails and tidbits we've received recently...

Note: You can look up other such items in our This Just In section. Not everything we receive appears on our top level page. It's a good idea to check this just in every once in a while.

** * 7HCC Merchandise * * *

7HCC Merchandise Available Online

Newproducts have been added along with corrections to the web page addressin our graphics.

Checkout the 7HCC Merchandise Website (http://www.cafeshops.com/7HCC)for neat products with our logo on them. They make great gifts forfriends and family. (No, we make no money on these items.)

*** Submitting Content To This Website * * *

If you have images that are relevant to the content of this website, (and you are a member or have a compelling reason why your images should be included here anyway), send them along to the Contact information below. Images should be no larger than 800 pixels in their largest dimension. We will select an appropriate thumbnail size. We will not provide a separate copyright notice for your image. (It's really not necessary because US Copyright law already affords you exclusive rights and protections to your images.)

Club Members!!! ...please consider submitting images you make during club events. They help make this page more interesting and, afterall, you are all photographers.

** * Welcome To The Seven Hills Camera Club Home Page * * *

We are one of the few camera clubs in central Massachusetts open to the general public and the only such club in the city of Worcester. We meet from September to May and, through this home page, make ourselves accessible throughout the year. Our goal is to encourage people to enjoy all aspects of photography. We don't mind if you don't join our club - you can visit us any time for free. But, we'd certainly be pleased if you did join and, as an incentive, when you do, you'll have access to certain club sponsored events and activities which aren't available to everyone. Just click our links to find out more about us.

Can you name the seven hills of Worcester? (Answer)