September 2007

President's Message

It's Back to Business

These past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind and a roller coaster ride for PPGF and myself.  All of this activity involved print competitions.  First, there was the August 16^th Inter-Guild competition between our guild members and the Palm Beach guild (PPGPB).  This is an annual event between the two guilds and the winning guild gets to take home the “Eastman Kodak Award Of Excellence” trophy.  There will be more information about the results of the competition forthcoming, but it was an awesome experience bringing home the “gold” this year.  My hat goes off to those members who took the time and expense to attend and/or submit their images for the competition.

Those members who competed or attended were: (Crystal Turkal, Eugene Jones, Dana Hill, Greg Roland, Stuart Lieberman, Willie Hill Jr., Jon Laye, Ronny Cush, Tracey Ahrendt, Laraine Ritchie, Dee Dee Rowe, and Zilsa Medienta.

At the end of competition we took a group shot of some of the members along with the trophy. The interesting fact about the competition is that many of the top entrants from our guild were students, new members, and several who were entering print competition for the first time. As a seasoned photographer who has not entered that many print competitions myself, I was thrilled and excited for these new upstarts. Just watching the big smiles and expressions of surprise when their prints merited was priceless. I believe our guild is fostering the right competitive atmosphere that encourages anyone who wants to excel to simply jump in and give it a try. I hope we never poison this spirit of achievement with jealousy and envy because our current generation of new photographers will be the future success of PPGF in 2008 and beyond.

Finally, I just got back from spending 5 days at the Florida Professional Photographers 2007 Annual Convention in Orlando. The highlight of the convention, of course, was print competition. Once again PPGF made a commendable showing. By the way the buzzword for us is “The Miami group” and I noticed that phrase was delivered with reverence. As your President it was a pleasure to see so many of our members in attendance even if they did not enter print competition. I sat and spoke with many of our members and it’s in these casual settings that you get to know a person more intimately than during a regular monthly meeting.

Aside from the attending seminars and print competition, I use the convention to meet one-on-one with some of the featured speakers and solicit them for our upcoming programs. I’m really excited about the prospect of speakers such as Tim Kelly, Al Audleman, Ron Nichols, Janet Boschker, Susan & Steward Powers, Susan Torregrosa, and Phoebe & Cherilyn Nocera sharing their knowledge and skills with PPGF in 2008. With the right amount of solicitation to these individuals the Guild can offer its membership and the south Florida photographic community quality educational products worth attending and becoming a member.

September marks the beginning of the end for the third quarter as far as business goes. It also marks the end of two significant events for PPGF and myself. It’s refreshing knowing that I was able to participate in both the Inter-Guild competition and FPP Convention and come out a winner.  Unfortunately, I cannot live in the success of those two events for the remainder of 2007.  Why?  That was yesterday.  Tomorrow I’ll be back in the studio, and it’ll be business as usual. See you next year.

Enjoy!

Willie Hill Jr., CPP
President

Inter-Guild Competition Results

Photoshop Tutorial

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