Morning All

I wonder whether you’ve managed to sneak into St Thomas’ Church, Garstang? If you have, your eyes will almost certainly have been drawn (possibly involuntarily) to our Camera Club Christmas tree, boldly flashing away right at the front like it owns the place.
Each year the church hosts a Christmas Tree Festival, and this year Freda has once again heroically sacrificed her eyesight, sanity, and sewing kit to create a set of camera-club-themed decorations. After many hours of intense concentration (and probably some muttering), she produced a tree that is not only impressively festive but also subtly shouting, “JOIN THE CAMERA CLUB!” from every branch.
So, enormous thanks to Freda for the time, effort, sweat, toil — and possibly a bit of seasonal madness — that resulted in this truly magnificent creation.
There’s still time to see it in person this Sunday afternoon before the tree is unceremoniously dismantled on Monday morning. And if you can’t make it along, fear not—I’ve attached three photographs for your viewing pleasure.
THANK YOU, FREDA! 📸🎄

Notices:

Competitions:
Dicentra; DPIs, entered correctly!
For all info, go to the Club website – click on Information – scroll to Club competition information – click on Competition Rules
Basic information:
Digital images in JPEG format and in sRGB colour space. OR may have: sRGB IEC61966-2.1
The maximum dimensions of the image must be 1600 pixels x 1200 pixels.
Digital images should be submitted on a USB stick (which will be returned) and members should create a new folder for each competition, that is one for colour and one for monochrome, with the folder name being your name followed by the competition name and date.
E.g. Mike Jenner Anything Goes 2025 colour
E.g. Mike Jenner Anything Goes 2025 monochrome
Filenames must be a maximum of 40 characters and contain a title and your competition number.
Please use a capital letter at the start of each title word and insert an underscore between the title and your competition number.
Thanks very much and if you need ANY help just email me or ring me on 07340 314408 – ta!

Summer programme! It will soon be summer!

Events Cup – 5 outings: April, May, June, July and August.
Thoughts, suggestions and ideas please for destinations. Last year we went to:

Stanley Park and Marton Mere
Coniston and Coniston Water
Pennington Flash Nature Reserve
RHS Garden Bridgewater
Downham Village and Clitheroe

Outings: May – August

Last summer we went out 6 times, mostly local, within 30 mins drive. Show and tell on 2 Wednesday evenings. Destinations below from last year:

Heysham
Kirkby Lonsdale
Sunderland Point
Brockholes Nature Reserve
Morecambe promenade
St Annes

Again, thoughts, suggestions and ideas please.

Cameras – I’ve been given 3 cameras lately:
1. Digital SLR Olympus E-400 complete with 2 lenses; 17.5 – 45mm and a 40 – 150mm. Plus batteries, charger, case, batteries and lots of instructions.
2. Panasonic Digital camera – Lumix DMC-TZ10. With a basic operating instructions booklet, battery charger.
3. Nikon D5000 with an 18 – 200 lens, batteries, charger, user’s manual and a Nikon D5000 for dummies book.

I’m setting these up as a ‘Camera Library’ so these are available to any member to borrow/use to see if they would like to ‘test-out’ one of them. Obviously, they are not up-to-date cameras but would give an idea about the possibilities of.
If you would like to take up the offer, just get in touch.

Members Photo Gallery:
I have mentioned this before – sorry!
So, attention please! Tim has suggested that we need to up-date our photographs that are on our website under Members Photo Gallery.
So, if you have some images on the website, please have a look and email Tim directly and tell him what to remove and send him some new ones.
They do need refreshing!
If you don’t have any photographs on the website PLEASE submit, up to 6, or just a couple if you want, to Tim, via email, and he will include them.
Our website is one of our main ways to advertise the club and hopefully attract new members so it is imperative we keep it up to date. Many thanks.
Tim’s email: timflesher@btinternet.com

Raffle:
We will be running a raffle on Wednesday 17^th during our Christmas bash – so any donations will be very kindly accepted!

Our 3^rd internal competition: Creatures and Plants of the World
Description of images: Any real creature or plant that was alive or was once alive, NO toys, sculptures, nothing artificial and NO people.
Last date for entry– 17^th December 2025 – that’s in 3 days’ time!
Date of competition– 21^st January 2026
If you have ANY questions or need ANY help, just get in touch – it is no problem – honest!

Up and coming programme of events:
Wednesday 17^th December – our Christmas bash – PPP!Plus, entertainment of the highest quality!
Wednesday 24^th December – no meeting Christmas break.
Wednesday 31^st December – no meeting Christmas break.
Wednesday 7^th January – Neil Protheroe via zoom on landscapes.
Neil writes: I thought perhaps to devote the first half of the talk to my “journey” in the world of photography, what I do and my approach to landscape photography; and the second half to a photographic tour of New Zealand’s scenic highlights.
Also, for the last three years I have also been closely involved in photographing the white horses of the Camargue in the South of France, and I would like to refer to that photography as well.
Wednesday 14^th January – Jerry Webb, via zoom, ‘Urban and Street photography.’

That’s all folks, and see you on Wednesday!
Cheers

Mike