Good evening. My name is Catherine Kelly. I’ve been asked to entertain and inform you with stories from the RA Photo Club’s past. I believe I got this job because I joined the club in September 1974 which makes me the longest serving member.
I have no memory of how I found out about the RA Camera Club (as it was then known) or why I decided to join. I’d had a camera in my hands since I was eight years old when I snapped pictures of people and then handed them cartoon drawings of themselves that I’d created myself.
By the time I had turned 12, I’d been given a used roll-film camera. Film could only be had twice a year. One roll for the summer holidays and one at Christmas. One dollar a week for an allowance didn’t go far, even in those days.
By the time I was 19, Expo ’67 was on, and I was working as a typist for the federal government. I splurged on a Kodak Instamatic which had film cassettes you just plunked into the camera. It also had these cute little flash cubes for your indoor pictures.
By 1974, I’d somehow heard about SLR cameras which were bound to make me an expert photographer. I purchased an East German Praktica with a 50 mm lens and shortly thereafter joined the RA Camera Club.
Here is my diary entry for September 10, 1974:
“I went to the RA Camera Club tonight. There was a large crowd and I spent the night walking around with the zipper down on my pants.”
Here is my diary entry from the next week:
“I went to the camera club again and about all we did was look at a few slides.”
And week number three:
“I didn’t feel like going to the Camera Club so stayed home to watch television.”
Week number four:
“They tried to show a film tonight, but it caught fire.”
By now you are probably all wondering what I’m doing here 40 years later and why I was given this job.
I don’t know myself. But the same thing that made me draw those cartoon pictures and 18 years later move on to a “real” camera must have kept me coming back after attending those first meetings. I didn’t know then all that I would learn and all the people I would meet. Two of the club members who were there for the zipper-down-on-pants show became my good friends who I still spend time with today, even though they no longer attend meetings.
THE RA CAMERA CLUB
The RA Camera Club of 1974 would almost not be recognizable to members of the RA Photo Club of today. There were about 50 members and meetings were held in the room at the top of the stairs next to the darkroom. Our meeting room has changed many times over the years as membership grew.
Executive positions (as I remember them) were as follows: President, Vice-President, Program Co-ordinator and Secretary/Treasurer. Yes, one person did both jobs as well as write articles about the club for the RA News. I know because it was my first executive position and I did the job for a couple of years at least.
There was also a darkroom and a studio although I don’t remember if anyone looked after them. There was also a Nature Group Co-ordinator.
NATURE GROUP OUTINGS
Nature Group outings occurred pretty close to home in those days. One favourite spot I remember well was Hog’s Back Park at different times of the year. No matter how many outings I attended, I always left something vital at home.
Most of you know Alice Gillies as a name on an award. But for me, she was the source of extra socks, dry mitts and hats on cold windy days – the best kind of friend to have.
Another outing we all looked forward to was a visit to the Marlborough Forest near North Gower. We would arrive in the dark at the home of Karin and Gerhard Lehmann on Malakoff Road. Karen would have coffee waiting for us while we waited for those who found it difficult to leave their beds.
While it was still hard to see, Gerhard would lead us into the forest where we would crawl around for several hours. Then it was time to head back to the house for a magnificent lunch which Karin always had ready for us. The cost was $3.00 no matter how many years went by.
A particularly memorable visit to Malakoff was a canoe trip in the rain. There was little water in the stream so the canoes kept hitting bottom. We all got soaking wet and Karin and Gerhard most generously lent us dry underwear for our trip home.
One Nature Group event which started in the 1990s was the Fall Nature Challenge. I know many of you feel hard done by being able to submit to the competition only a handful of the thousands of great shots you got during the day with your digital cameras.
For the first couple of nature challenges, those who showed up were handed one roll of 36-exposure slide film. At the end of a certain time, you handed in that film to the person in charge. Your 36 images were judged, whether or not you had exposed the film or let your camera fall into a creek. Eventually this became too much of a burden for the competition organizers, so we were able to select our own images, although a lesser number were allowed.
COMPETITIONS
For perhaps my first 4 or 5 years in the Photo Club, I didn’t have enough nerve to enter competitions. For another few years after that, I would enter some pictures but then stay away from the meeting nights when the results were given.
I had a breakthrough when I was able to attend the competition evenings with my work on view. I stayed in the farthest, blackest corner of the room in case I needed to sneak out in shame.
Confidence was not increased by the way the projector for the competition results was focused. They used the slide that received the lowest mark, as it was first in the tray, with the winners last. One night while I huddled in the dark, one of my slides was used to focus the machine. They had a bit of trouble with it so moved on to the next lowest scoring photo. It was mine as well.
STUDIO/PORTRAITS/FIGURE GLAMOUR
The first studio was in the same small room where we held our meetings. The room was made smaller because part of it had been closed off to form a storage cabinet for our meager studio equipment, a couple of hot lights and a white wooden chair which is probably still in use today.
I don’t recall that there was anyone in charge of booking portrait photography sessions. I think interested parties just got a small group together. Models were club members or relatives. We eventually moved on to paid models and also provided photos for different clubs at the RA.
I don’t think that when they designed the studio they considered the burden on the electrical system caused by the extra-bright lights being plugged in. We regularly blew fuses on a goodly part of the top floor and took turns telling the janitor he had to fix things yet again.
In later years we had outdoor portrait shoots which were more of a challenge as we hadn’t the same control of the lighting situation. There were other potential problems lurking as well. One of our favourite sites was the carbide mill at Meech Lake. On one occasion we were joined by a team of nudists. The two gentlemen started out by just watching, then taking photos of the model with the cameras they had stored in their hats. Finally one of them climbed into the waterfall with the model and posed with her. We really didn’t pay her enough that day!
AUDIO-VISUAL
By the early 1980s, we’d already begun our annual Open House events. We started throwing a few slides into a carousel and calling it an audio visual presentation (although I don’t remember any music).
Things became more sophisticated with a donated reel-to-reel tape recorder and two projectors. By 1990, with the help of Paul Holland, we’d made the leap to the 4-track, dissolve unit system which many of you remember. Because two images dissolved into each other, we were always looking for the artistic “third image” to appear between them and get gasps of delight from the judges.
As with Christmas, the AV competition came at the same time every year, but most AV producers waited until crunch time to work on their shows. With only one set of equipment to share, we could only have it for half a week and then had to turn it over to the next desperate person.
It used to take me 90% of my half week to set up and relearn how to use the equipment, so my final shows got banged out pretty quickly. As with the other competitions, I didn’t fare too well. Fortunately, there was someone whose shows were worse than mine so I always had the satisfaction of coming in second last. It was pretty hard on me when I learned he was moving out of town.
AV competition nights were fraught with tension and despair. Trays malfunctioned and dropped slides onto the floor or lost them in the bowels of a projector. The tapes were miscued and did not match the images. Bulbs blew. It was all great fun. Especially for judges and the audience when these breakdowns occurred.
By the late 1990s, Debbie Grass had let us use her software to produce our shows on a computer. I’m sure she regretted her decision many times if everyone else had as many stupid questions as I did. Although I was eager to hear the clanking projectors no more, I couldn’t understand why images had to be a certain size, how the computer found the show within itself to play it, and yes, it was possible to use an image more than once, or even only part of an image without resorting to a role of masking tape.
CCC ’98 AND ’03
CCC stands for Camera Canada College and was held annually for many years in different cities. Ottawa hosted the events twice in 1998 and 2003. On both occasions there was a lot of work by a lot of us but the two conferences turned out to be among the most successful ever held. What I took away from these events was the knowledge that this bunch of people I’d knew only as photo enthusiasts had many other valuable skills. If fact I found out I had other skills I knew nothing about previously.
I believe the RA Photo Club will be hosting the event again, I think in 2017, so I encourage all of you to sign up as volunteers and attendees. You’ll learn a lot about a lot of things.
SCAVENGER HUNTS
I missed the first one as I was otherwise engaged but I did participate in several. Clues such as Danger, Highly Opinionated, Use It Or Lose It and Why Me! are great for stretching your photographic imagination. One year we even had a nature scavenger hunt on the same day as the urban one. That was indeed a challenge. But, as with most RA Photo Club outings, there’s always a good meal waiting for you at the end.
TRAVEL
Aside from creating award-winning images, most photographers seem to also like to travel to places near and far.
Up until 10 years ago, my travel experiences with the Photo Club had been of the “near” variety – nature outings in and around Ottawa and Western Quebec and a long weekend spent on the Bruce Peninsula.
However, in 2003, two club members, Margaret Wood and Danielle Thibault proposed something more exotic. How about a century-old hunting lodge in the Tuscan hills? In October, 2004, sixteen of us found our way to the Villa D’Arbia, an 11-bedroom, 8 bathroom villa where we spent the next two weeks before scattering to other locations in Italy.
Two years later, Mario Lagacé led 8 of us to the Greek Islands of Paros and Santorini.
In 2008, 14 of us followed Edwin and Mary Lee on a 3-week tour of China.
Further tours followed in 2010 and 2014.
A smaller number of us met on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2010. There have been many other trips organized by club members and if you want to travel with people who don’t mind you staring at a starfish for half an hour, this is the place to meet these folks.
Twelve of us made another trip to China in October and November this year and we still seem to be speaking to each other despite some interesting and unexpected experiences.
CLOSING
I have mentioned only a few of the RA Photo Club activities that I’ve participated in. There are many others and something is bound to interest you.
For those of you who are new to the club, if you want to become better photographers and artists, you’ve come to the right place. Although you can get some formal training here from people who know what they are doing, most of what you will learn will be informally from other club members who may be standing next to you at a waterfall on a nature group outing or drinking a beer beside you at the Fieldhouse after a Tuesday night meeting.
I can think of so many positive things that have happened to me because I joined the RA Photo club 40 years ago.
I will now show a short audio visual production which will bring back memories of the past for many of you. Although most of the images date from the more recent digital age, I was able to find a few highlights from earlier decades.
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