The Hills Photographic Society is a young incorporated camera club, meeting at the Hills Hub, Emerald, Victoria, on the second and fourth Thursday of the month at 7.30pm. All are welcome to visit with a view to becoming a member.
We are a not-for-profit organisation, formed to share our common love of photography, as well as knowledge, skills and creativity. The club provides a friendly environment for member to learn and enhance their skills for taking and processing images with their chosen cameras.
Our current committee members are:
President: Alan Pan
Vice President: Steve Wickenton
Secretary: Paul Bianco
Treasurer: Martin Sudul
Competition Steward: Kathie Thomas
Website Manager: Linda Sijpkes
VAPS representative:
Committee members: John Weeks, Robyn Gallucci, Pauline Bunker, Steve Williams
Some of the members of our club.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
2021 AGM
Well, here we are, still going quite strongly in spite of all the lockdowns. The move to the state-of-the-art Hills Hub has been a great success where we enjoy a great space, excellent audio-visual gear and a good central location. Although we’ve had many meetings in that space, we did have to enlist our well-practised Zoom meeting procedure a number of times, even staging a few competitions with an outside judge joining us.
However, I think not being able to meet in person has led a few members to not renew their memberships. Unfortunately we’ve lost David Jenkins, a past president, Daine Alcorn, past secretary, Don Rankin, Kerry Clarke, Jens Rumoller, Liz Millman and Anne-Marie Hurley to our group.
On the good news front though we’ve gained a number of new members in Michael Shane, Eammon Laughton, Linda Sijpkes, Martin Sudul, Nola Ford and more recently, Matthew Law, Chris Holmes, Geoff Simmons and Mary Wiking, the latter four who we hope to see at meetings soon. I think this new interest is a direct result of our successful Facebook page.
Although we’ve been relatively hamstrung by Covid -19 restrictions we have enjoyed some excellent workshops : Shooting Monochrome by John Weeks, Flowers and Plants by Kathie Thomas, Looking at Perspective with Allan Pan, Photo Stacking presented by Steve Wickenton, Capturing Emotions by Allan Pan and a small workshop on Framing in preparation for the Hub exhibition.
If my memory is correct, the only outings we had was a pleasant evening at the Pine Grove Hotel in December and a visit to the Lotus Water Gardens in March.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the hard-working committee: Pauline Bunker as VP, Allan Pan for his expert work as Treasurer and Kathie Thomas for an excellent job as Secretary. I’d like to make special mention of Henk Van den Bergen for not only doing a great job of Competition Steward, ensuring we had interesting competitions, pressing us to get entries in and chasing up judges but for his initiative in setting up the on-line voting system for in-house competitions. Thank you also to Steve Wickenton, Robyn Galluci and John Weeks for your specialised input on the committee
A huge thanks to you, the members of Hills Photographic Society for again sticking with it throughout this difficult period. Welcome to the new members. It’s great to see new faces, bringing new blood and new ideas.
Finally, congratulations to the newly-elected committee, especially the president-elect. I’m sure he or she will drive us toward a bigger, better and more enjoyable year.
Paul Bianco
President
2019-2021