Chair: Fintan Healy
Treasurer: Mike Roberts
Secretary: Terry Rees-Pedlar
Programme Secretary: Adrian Butcher
Competition Secretaries: John Crowland (internal competitions), Pat Hopkins (external competitions)
Webmaster: Lyn Sharples
Publicity: Terry Rees-Pedlar
Training and new member induction: Keith Sharples
If you have any questions or suggestions about the running of the club please speak to a committee member.
The committee is elected at the AGM. Any member can put themselves forward for any position on the committee at the AGM. If more than one person is interested in a committee post it will be decided by a vote at the AGM. We are always on the look out for new committee members, if you feel you might like to take up a committee post please talk to the current committee.
Image on this page: "Britannia Bridge" by John Crowland
Committee meetings are held as and when necessary to discuss the running of the club. Below are summaries of what was discussed at the latest committee meetings:
10/4/24
Mike brought us up to date on current finances and stated that the new account with Lloyds Bank is working well. It is very useful to be able to make online payments and check finances online. We are in the black but our expenditure will be more than our income this year. A potential saving next year would be to slightly reduce the number of Zoom presentations (currently every month).
There was further discussion about increasing membership. It was decided to go ahead with an advert in "The Voice" in the September/October edition. We will also have the mini exhibition at Monmouth Market on Saturday 31st August, weather permitting.
Arrangements for the upcoming Bill Ward event were discussed, publicity to go to other local clubs and the possibility of using a ticketing system to sell visitor tickets. If the workshop Bill is giving the following day is over subscribed names will be pulled from a hat.
Arrangements for this year's AGM were discussed. All committee members are willing to stand again except for Jackie who wishes to step down from the post of competition secretary. If re-elected, it will be Fintan's final year as chair.
The competition themes for the next two years were discussed and decided on: 2024/25 - dpi "On This Day", print "Boats"
2025/26 - dpi "Intentional Camera Movement", print- "Architecture"
A new competition "The Five Print Challenge" will be introduced in 2025. This will run independently from the other club competitions. It was decided to re-purpose the Tony Cutting Trophy ,(which isn't really working in its current use), to be the award for the Five Print Challenge.
The Photo Marathon will take place again this year, on August 10th.
It was suggested that at some club meetings, (those where we have a greater number of visitors) it would be good to run a raffle to raise funds.
10/1/24
Mike gave a summary of the current finances which are reasonably healthy at present, but would benefit from increased membership.
The insurance is due for renewal in February, Terry has this in hand, at an increased cost of 20p from last year!
Terry and Mike are in the process of moving the club's bank account to LLoyds Bank. This will have the benefit of allowing on-line banking.
We currently have 25 members. It was felt that an increase in membership would really help the club. Various idea were suggested for increasing publicity and it was decided to hold a further meeting at the end of January to discuss these ideas in more depth.
Having been asked by the WPF what we felt they could do to help clubs more, the current benefits of belonging to the WPF were discussed, and the need to make the membership more aware of what the WPF do. It was felt that more workshops along the lines of the recent WPF print workshop would be well received.
Adrian is already working on next years programme and initial dates were approved.
There was some discussion around competitions. It would be nice to have more members enter and ideas were considered to encourage this, however entering competitions is not for everyone and that is fine. The photoentry system seems to be working well, Fintan will offer help to anyone having difficulty with it. As a club we are doing well in external competitions this year and more members are submitting entries for these.
28/3/23
Update from latest committee meeting:
Mono Training and Workshops: Fintan, on behalf of everyone, expressed his thanks to Keith for the Mono training. All enjoyed it immensely and members believed it has helped their photography greatly, Elisa gaining a ribbon after re-editing on Keith’s advice.
Replacing the old computer: Keith has listed the required spec and researched prices for a replacement. We believe that we are looking at around £500 to get a suitable laptop. To help finances Jackie has booked a market stall for April 29 th to sell prints donated by members. She will email members asking for mounted images and help on the day. Friday 21 st April will be a collection at the club evening. Jackie will source some cheap cellophane covers to keep the images clean.
External Battles and Competitions: MPC has had an excellent year in external competitions, representing the WPF at Blackburn and achieving very good scores in all the other competitions entered. Pat and her team have put a tremendous effort into organising, entering, selecting and attending these events. Well done to everyone who put images forward for selection as without you it would not be possible.
Approaching the end of the Year: The annual Open Competition is on May 5 th . Let’s have a great turn out to end the Year. Hand in evening is 21 st April.
End of the year and the AGM is coming up. Jackie wishes to stand down as secretary and if possible, we would like to recruit a vice chair to support Fintan. The present committee are willing to continue in post if no members would like to put themselves forward. It is essential to have a secretary, it is part of the conditions of belonging to the WPF. If you think you have some time and can contribute speak to a member of the committee.
The AGM: Friday 19 th May Not only will we have the AGM but prize giving and social evening, so keep the date.
15/11/22
The club's finances and membership numbers were discussed. Both are looking good at present, though it was noted that under the new system of fees most of the income comes in at the beginning of the season rather than being spread out over the season as before. We have 28 paid up members at present, with at least one more likely to join.
The programme was discussed, especially planning for the Bill Ward event in January. This will be by advance ticket only for outside guests (members free but need to say in advance if attending).
The Christmas Social will be on 16th December at Creates, Monmouth. Payment and menu choices to be made in advance.
Outside competitions are going well with the PAGB championship attended and the Stanley Chell and Adrian Webster Memorial competitions coming up. Also there is a possibility of a battle with Orkney Camera Club (by Zoom).
Publicity wise we will be having another display at Monmouth Library. We also plan to get some leaflets printed as we have some credit with 'Bizay'.
Keith and Lyn are planning to run some Monochrome tutorials, two by Zoom and one 'live' meeting.
29/08/22 First meeting of the new committee after the AGM.
The committee agreed that although we no longer need to take money at the door for meetings in the Village Hall we do need to keep a register of who is present, and emergency contact details. It was agreed that potential new members get their first month of meetings/zooms etc free but must join in the second month. Pro -rata fees were agreed for those joining part way through the season, and also that under 16s would be half price. The fee for visitors was set at £5.
It was decided that the Bill Ward evening in January should be a ticketed evening (free to Monmouth PC members), and to publicise the evening to encourage visitors from other clubs.
Pat reported that the preparations for the PAGB inter-club competition at Blackburn in October are going well. We are still waiting for confirmation of dates and venue from the PAGB.
Keith Sharples offered to run a mounting workshop on 1st October for those needing help before the first club competition.
Jackie agreed to make a start on organising the Christmas Social.
27/04/22 The committee discussed the agenda for the upcoming AGM.
09/03/22 A quick update from our last committee meeting where we looked to the future programme now it is looking like Covid restrictions will be removed. We felt Covid had put a damper on spirits in general and we needed to reinvigorate MPC. Also finances are not as healthy as they were due to the past two years when Zoom costs have had to be covered but with no income from Zoom meetings.
Going forward to next year we will probably have to charge to attend Zoom meetings as the speakers are all charging a fee now, and consider putting the cost of the Zoom licence into the annual fee.
On a more cheerful note, the webchallenge will continue as feedback from this has been excellent and all who have taken part have really enjoyed it.
Also we have decided to have a trip out once a month which will be scheduled into the programme and can be followed up with a Zoom meeting for people to share their images.
To kick this off our first trip will be to Fintan's garden in Brockweir. It is part of the National Gardens scheme and he has invited us all to bring a picnic and our cameras. Full details to follow.
Now that Christopher and Catherine are stepping down we do need more members to join the committee. This is not an onerous task and the more of us the lighter the load. Roles are flexible so please speak to a member of the committee if you think you can spare some time.
12/10/21 After consulting the members on how they feel about returning to F2F meetings it has been decided to have a mixture of zoom and live programme as there was a small but significant number of members who were still anxious about retuning to the hall. November is going to be F2F meetings as they aren’t possible to change, and Zoom for meetings in December. In the new year there will be some tweaking of the programme to get a balance between Zoom and F2F. When using the hall, we will be following the risk assessment set out by the hall and have sent everyone the procedure we will follow to do our best to ensure everyone’s comfort and safety. If you are going out on a trip to take photos and would like company, let everyone know via WhatsApp. Its always great to be able to share ideas and knowledge.
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