Due to the pandemic, our usual meeting place, the Museum of Natural History became unavailable in late March 2020. We cancelled all our meetings and activities for the remainder of the 2019-2020 season and our Executive held several online meetings throughout the summer to test online solutions and decide about the upcoming year. We knew that the Museum would not be available (if at all) until later in the 2020-2021 season, so we have decided to keep our regular schedule and move to online meetings using the WebEx platform to protect our membership, many of whom are seniors. By adopting Public Health Guidelines, wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing, we have also been able to safely have outdoor field trips.
The Photographic Guild of Nova Scotia (PGNS) is a member of CAPA and PSA (Photographic Society of America) and we participate in interclub competitions in both organizations. To keep active in these competitions, we developed an in-house solution for online judging, as the available options did not fully meet our requirements. With this, we think that the Guild is ready for the challenging new season.
Our PSA Representative, Viki Gaul, brought to the Executive’s attention that Lisa Langell, a renowned photographer from Arizona was offering free webinars to PSA clubs. Lisa was happy to hear from us and we set up a date and time for the webinar, titled “The Power of Contrast”. Lisa mentioned that we were free to invite other clubs in the region.
In the spirit of the Atlantic Bubble, we invited the CAPA members and clubs in Atlantic Region as well as other non-CAPA clubs in Nova Scotia to join us for the talk. When Lisa started her presentation, we enjoyed a little over 100 photographers on the webinar.
Lisa’s webinar focused on how contrast leads our eyes around the image. She used great examples and interactive audience participation during the presentation to prove this for the attendees. Although many of us knew how the contrast can be used to enhance the images, we learned a bit more about the of psychology of this process and how to use it effectively.
We would like to use this opportunity to thank Lisa Langell (https://www.langellphotography.com) for her presentation and all the photographers in the Atlantic Region who joined us to participate in this excellent webinar.
The PGNS will have many more webinars during the coming months as we remain online until the end of this pandemic.
Laszlo Podor (President of PGNS) and Joyce S.K. Chew (Halifax District CAPA Rep)
