IN FOCUS Central Texas Photographic Club
Recently, Travis Renker (son of Bob & Judy Renker) gave our club a lap-top computer along with some accessories for this computer. This computer will be of great help to our club in its competitions and photography sharing. We are indeed very thankful to Travis for this wonderful gift.

Members of our club continue to involve themselves in activities of the community around us. Recently, Judy & Bob Renker gave a program on basic photography and terminology related to digital cameras to the senior group at Heights Baptist Church in Temple. Judy & Bob will be giving the same program in the Wilson Art Room of the Sammons Community Center of Temple at 2 PM on June 20.
For a number of years through the "Association for a Pet Adoption Center" in Temple, Judy Renker has participated in the photography of animals moving toward adoption.
On June 26, at the Bell County Expo Center, members of our club will be participating in the 2008 4-H youth photography workshop.

At the meeting of our club on July 21, we will have a competition with the subject being "patriotism".

Choosing Photo Subjects: When choosing a specimen, an action, a scenic, or a pose, the beginning photographer is advised to look for the unusual, remarkable, interesting, impressive, wonderful, special, unexpected, astonishing, surprising, uncommon, amazing, and so forth.

Beginning photographers tend to be generalists when choosing photo subjects. Each kind of subject has a better and a worse version of itself. It pays to know what to look for. A commonplace subject is ordinary. The photographer's responsibility is either to capture the subject in a special way or to choose a special version of the subject.

Flower photos can look like snapshots if the flower is not perfect. One blotchy spot on a petal can say, "I am an ordinary flower." Excellent photos have special qualities. Being ordinary is not one of them.

  • A scenic can be ordinary in normal weather in the middle of a nice day. An extraordinary scenic can be the same scene taken in special lighting or weather.
  • Beginning photographers tend to take what is there, regardless. A more experienced photographer sometimes forgoes a scene in the knowledge that it is not special enough. Photos taken on such occasions are commonly referred to as documentary or record shots. Normally, one would not enter "record shots" into competition even at camera club, except for possible critique. It is all right to take such photos and keep them as a memento of the occasion.
  • One subject by itself may turn into a more dramatic photo if there are many of them, such as a line of cars at a racetrack, a row of tulips, or the spokes of a wheel. It is the photographer's responsibility to look for the "wow" factor.
  • Choosing the best photo subjects is hard for beginners. Thanks to the digital camera, it is easy to take many, many pictures and trash the bad ones. Used as a learning tool, the subject matter of the many pictures can be evaluated for the quality of being special.


(reprinted from the PSA Journal, June 2007, p. 5, by Carole Kropscot)

Hoping to see each of you at the next gathering of the Central Texas Photographic Club.

President: Elaine Dobos, 254-780-4598, txartiste@sbcglobal.net
Editor: Jim McClendon, 254-939-8156, onjmcclendon@aol.com