I am Vaccinium, and I will serve as your host for Eden Photographers. Welcome to the start of what I hope will be a fun and rewarding experience for everyone on Eden Fantasys who loves the art of photography. This subforum, the Eden Clubs and Events Blog, and the Eden Photographers Tumblr blog (coming soon) will serve as the three homes for the content of this club. The subforum is where questions can be asked, monthly club meetings will take place, and general discussion about photography can occur. The Eden Clubs and Events Blog is where I will be posting weekly photography-related articles and meeting summaries, and other content. The Tumblr blog is where photos you choose to submit each month will be posted so that fellow club members can critique them.

My articles will touch on a broad array of photography topics, from equipment, to technique, to composition, to photo processing. Although these articles will help many of you better understand the art and science of photography, I feel the critiquing is where all of us (myself included) can most benefit. Critiquing a photo will hone your critical photographic eye, and at the same time provide feedback to the person posting the photo.

I hope all of you will be able to attend our monthly meetings. I will be bringing up certain topics for discussion at these meetings that I touch on in the blog articles, and it will also be a place to socialize, talk about photography, and learn about the monthly theme for the photos to be posted on the blog. There will also be a $25 gift card given away at each meeting, as if the photography talk wasn’t enough for you to attend.

I’ll get into all these topics in greater detail as we move forward.

A little about myself: I am not a classically trained photographer, as my educational background is actually in science. My photography reflects this, as I specialize in nature photography. I have been taking photographs for much of my life, but I have been a serious photographer for about 13 years now. I don’t actively try to get my photography published, but I have had several published in magazines and in business and government brochures and guides. Instead, nearly all my photos are actually being saved up for a series of books I’m busily shopping around to publishers. For this reason, I probably won’t be posting much of that photography here, but instead will focus on other photographic genres with which have less experience. As such, I’m hoping all of you can help me become a better photographer as much as I can help you do the same.

So, feel free to treat this forum as any other, and post about any photography-related topic you desire. less

what if someone whose not a photographer,they just have a digital camera and take pics and they want to post their pics and just want to hear what others say,good or bad? I would do that just for fun..like if someone said "post your cuttest animal picture" or somethin like that I would..or even show me the worst picture you have taken would be fun or take a picture in your favorite outfit our take a creative picture with a favorite EF product...or take a romantic picture...would this be the forum for this? less

We're still working out the kinks for the Tumblr site, but what is likely to happen is everyone will send their photos to me or someone else, and then they'd get posted on Tumblr, where the critiquing can happen. Tumblr, for those of you who don't know, is a blog system much like Wordpress or Bloguin, but much more integrated like Flickr is for photography. Tumblr is quite open-minded about the types of material they'll host, so they are a good choice in case anyone wants to post photos of nudes, pornographic images, etc.

And yes, there will be assignments, but I'd look at them more as a theme for the month rather than an actual assignment. I plan on keeping them on the non-specific side (e.g., "red", "winter", "long-exposure", "solitude", "passion", etc.) rather than anything specific. I will also not be requiring anyone to photograph subjects with which they might not feel comfortable (e.g., "nudes", "pornography", etc.), which is another good reason to keep the theme fairly general. If someone wants to photograph nudes or submit their own artistic pornography, they absolutely can, but I don't want it to be anything close to a requirement.

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