Looking forward to a New Year

Merry Christmas! 

See you January 14th at 7pm

December Meeting

Our November 12th meeting was great.  If you missed it ... you missed out!  We discussed the ideas club officers have proposed for the club and then had our first "new" photo critique. (see the previous post).   We did not do our usual "impact scoring" of images - rating each 1st place, 2nd place etc...  Instead each photographer was able to discuss why they liked their image, how they took it and get feedback for how to improve it.  There was a lot of fun and insightful discussion and I thought it went over very well!  We have several educational meetings planned for the new year. 

We still need nominations for 2010 officers - President. Vice President . Secretary. Treasurer

If you have nominations email Mike or Christopher before our next meeting.  Feel free to nominate yourself :)  It's fun to help out and with a strong functioning Board as support it is NOT hard or time consuming to be an officer.   


Our next meeting - and last of the year - will be December 10th

This will be our end of the year party and election of officers.  Club members and spouses invited, please no children.  We'll serve Bajio and deserts - YUM.  There will be info sent by email as the date gets closer.  RSVP will be needed so keep an eye out in your email for more info. 

Happy Thanksgiving and see you all soon!

Message from VP and club officers

 I wanted to post this email message Christopher sent out a couple weeks ago - He did a good job explaining the direction the club is headed.  Obviously the meeting he refers to is past, but the info is still pertinant so keep reading ... - Lisa :) 


Hi everyone!

I am excited to announce that The High desert photography club is about to embark on some great changes that I think everyone will enjoy.

We are having a meeting this next Thursday to discuss the proposed changes and get input from the club members.

The officers of the club and I feel that we have strayed away from what the original plan was in the beginning of the club. To share, to learn and have fun!

Here are just a few of the proposed changes in the club:

-Lower the number of images at critique to one or two

-Have every month be photographers choice at the critique.

-Do not score the images anymore. Instead, have a discussion on what could be helpful with the images. {i.e.. composition, exposure, DOF, Photoshop, etc.} No winners, No losers, just helpful tips on photos.

-We will have the second Thursday of each month be an educational course of some type. We have a short list of ideas already. But, we would love to hear from all of you in what you are interested in.

-We will plan the educational meetings every quarter at a club meeting with everyone’s input.

-Make the website a static page and keep the blog for club updates and posting of critique photos

We will also be taking nominations for new Officers for next year. We will vote at the dec meeting/potluck. If you are interested in serving or know a current member that is, please plan on attending next week.

We are planning on having the main items catered.

Caol Hoffman will be sending out information as to what else to bring. We will be doing a photographers choice critique for November and December


If you have not made it to a meeting lately, PLEASE try to make it next Thursday. We are really excited with the direction of these plans, please show up and let us know if you think the same way.

Let’s build this into the best educational photography club in Idaho!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Best regards,

Christopher Balmer

Vice President High Desert photographers.

May 2009 Critique - Portraits

March Photo Critique - "Leading Lines"

April 9th Meeting

Tonight's guest speaker is Kort Duce-Freelance Photographer

He will be speaking about the in's and out's of freelance work and his specialty

along with showing some of his work.

We have also decided to have our end of month meeting next week in order to cover any area's concerning the show

on the 24th.

We will also do our critique - Photographers Choice.

Meeting Place: Perfect Light Camera & Supply

2169 e 17th st.

Teton Village Mall

7:00pm.

Spring Photo Show!

High Desert Photographers are pleased to announce their Spring Show.

For more information click here!

Image Submission
Date: April 23, 2009
Time: 5:00‐9:00 p.m.
Where: Eastern Idaho Technical College (EITC)
1600 S. 2500 E., Idaho Falls, Idaho
Creek Bldg, Room 558

Public Viewing
Date: April 25‐May 22, 2009
Where: Eastern Idaho Technical College (EITC)
1600 S. 2500 E., Idaho Falls, Idaho

Open Judging
Date: April 24, 2009
Time: 7:00‐10:00 p.m.
Where: Eastern Idaho Technical College (EITC)
1600 S. 2500 E., Idaho Falls, Idaho
Creek Bldg, Room 558

Click here for Rules and Entry Form(PDF)

February Critique - Photographers Choice

Meeting Thursday 3/12/2009

Steve Ridges will be sharing lighting techniques with flash units.
He will have his camera tethered to our Big Screen TV so that we will be able to see the results of what he is doing and talking about.

Here is what Steve plans to cover.
1. Direct on camera flash
2. Bounce off the ceiling
3. Off camera bounce off the ceiling
4. Addition of second flash bouncing off the ceiling
5. Shoot thru umbrella
6. Shoot thru umbrella with second flash on the backdrop + addingsome gels to change backdrop color and tone of image
7. Clam Shell lighting
8. Question and answer as we go along

It will be a fun & informative meeting.
7:00pm Perfect Light Camera & Supply 2169 E. 17th St. (Teton Village Mall)

Feb 26 Meeting was a Great success

The Photo Critique meeting was a great success. It was Photographers choice, with 53 images submitted. One of our newest members (Rob Himmelspach) took 1st place with an excellent image of a Mountain Goat from the Alpine Wyoming Herd. I must say that the quality of images being presented at the critiques continues to get better all the time making for some stiff competition each month.We continue to see the Club growing in size and recently had to purchase more chairs so everyone could have a seat.
We also discussed plans for the Judged Show in April. (more info coming soon)
We will be ordering Business cards soon for Members to hand out to people that are interested in our Club.

February 26th Meeting

The next meeting is a Photographers Choice photo critiques on February 26th at 7pm.

Please submit up to three images. 1920 x 1080 x 300dpi maximum resolution.

Email your images to Steve Ridges at the_ridges@hotmail.com

If you choose to bring your images Thursday night, please be there by 6:30pm in order

to provide sufficient time to get them loaded.

February 12th Meeting

Come this Thursday and learn about flickr, one of the largest growing image hosting Web sites (more than 3 billion images to date). Pat Neeley will be giving an overview on account setup, uploading images, and tips, tricks and techniques he has learned from using flickr these past two years.

We will be meeting at Perfect Light Camera & Supply. (7:00 pm)
2169 East 17th Street. (In the Teton Village Mall, across from Garcia's Mexican Restaurant)

Hope to see everone there!

January 2009 Critique - Frame in Frame

January Photo Critique

There was a great turnout last night at the photo critique and we met quite a few new members. There were 24 pictures submitted for critique and the category was a frame within a frame. Pictures will be posted soon.

Other things we discussed...

For those of you who don't know, Rangefinder is a free photography magazine which you can subscribe to by filling out your information here.

Also, Cooliris is a web browser plugin for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer that opens a preview of a picture when the mouse hovers over the link. In simpler terms, it is a fun way to view images on sites such as flickr. We will be discussing this more at the next meeting in February.