The end of term!

Meeting Report

Our last meeting of the season was quite well attended, with most others not present for good reasons.

Chairman Chris opened proceedings by telling us the sad news that liz Barber fell whilst doing some winning shots in Scotland and has badly damaged her wrist. We all wish her a very speedy recovery

Then on with the proceedings. First apologies followed by approval of last year’s minutes.

Time now for Chris’s report. He said how much he had enjoyed being Chairman of our club and went on to tell us about the high points and the low.

We had some really good speakers especially Vanda Ralevska and he enjoyed the meeting when some club members showing their Nature Photographs. He was pleased that we had started the coffee mornings when members got to know each other a bit better.

He was particularly proud of the clubs performances in the External Club Competitions, starting with the Sussex Fed PI comp where he had collected two medals awarded to two of our entrants, Jean MacWhirter and me. Jean’s brilliant image "Little and Large" is being used by the Southern Region inthe Inter-Region competition and exhibition, so congratulations to her. We then went on to come Third in the Sussex Fed Print comp, which is the club’s best result ever, and shortly afterwards we were First in the Crouch Shield PI comp. This made our Chairman very happy.

He then thanked the members of the Committee for making his life much easier with their help.

Then the not so good things. Firstly the shortage of new members (which we have always struggled with). We are surrounded by several much bigger clubs who have up to 100 members to our 32. They also meet at least once a week.

He also was unhappy that we had not been able to find a Chairman to take over from him. He pointed out that these two issues seem to be a malaise that afflicts Storrington clubs generally, as similar things have occurred with other organisations. However, we are a small group of friendly people who enjoy our photography and get some very good results, as already mentioned. Our program for the new season is very good, so that may attract more people.

Another disappointment has been the lack of support for the monthly competition, which Janet has worked so hard to organise.

Finally he thanked his Wife Carol for all her support during his two years.

Next up we had Janet, our very efficient Treasurer. She reported that we had more or less broken even this year and there was no need to increase our subscriptions as we have quite a decent sum on deposit and we will use some of that money to pay speakers and judges as necessary without worrying. She thanked Norman Kirby for auditing the financial spread sheet at short notice.

Then our two Competition Secretaries Anne and Alex gave their reports giving us statistics on the number of top marks and entries. 17 is the most popular mark!! We have managed to get judges to spread the marks a bit more, however if we all produce such good pictures it must be difficult!?

The next item on the agenda was the presentation of the cups by the Chairman, as follows:

 

  • The Picthall Cup (for the most improved PI worker of the year) awarded jointly to John Goodfellow and Jane Coward
  • The Rowling Cup (for the most improved Print worker) Chris had to award to himself Chris West
  • The Petworth Cup (for the best PI of the year) to Derek Grieve
  • The Emmett Cup (for the best print of the year) to Daisy Kane
  • The Taylor Cup (for the PI worker of the year) jointly to John Gauvin, Norman Kirby and David Seddon
  • The Dixon Cup (for the Print worker of the year) to Di Walker
  • The Anonymous Cup (for the Photographer of the year) to Daisy Kane

 

Congratulations to all the cup winners.

There followed the election of Officers, where apart from the lack of Chairman, every other serving officer will carry on unless anyone objected, which of course they did not. The Chairman’s job is to be shared between Paul Hayward, Derek Grieve and Chris West. We will do our very best to do the job to the best of our abilities, he said talking for himself.

The Vice Chairman (EX) Ray then presented Chris with a small gift of appreciation from the club for his dedication and efficiency whilst being a very fine Chairman. All our thanks go to him and we wish him well on his long holiday to Spain starting today. We also congratulate him on 40 years of marriage.

We then had a brief talk from Jane Coward who has very kindly volunteered to run the monthly Coffee mornings, followed by a talk by John Gauvin who has agreed to run some instructional evenings about Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop or whatever else we decide we should like him to instruct us about. This will be discussed in more detail and announced in due course. Anyway, our thanks to both Jane and John for volunteering to do these jobs.

After the break we had the annual auction run by Paul and Alex which as usual caused much laughter as our two resident comedians took £124.50p from us for everyones throw-out photographic stuff. Very well done and thank you to our auctioneers.

We were all done in good time and we parted with heavy hearts and a few tears as we will not meet again until September. However there are the coffee mornings and maybe a couple of events where some of us will meet again.

Submitted by Derek Grieve on