Hey Photographers, apologies for the short notice.  MalamuteMan has graciously offered to begin another 30 day trial for us.  Our first session with this license will be June 2nd at 6:00 PM Central. 

That is 7:00 Eastern, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 Pacific, 1:00 Hawaiian.

The last session was a blast.  The running time was approximately two hours, most of us had liquor of some sort, and we discussed articles of past, ways to improve composition and, of course, general photography.  We'll continue this meeting "format" and hopefully we'll begin to discuss some group meta items not gotten to the last time.  Please bring your ideas and thinking caps.

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here.

Found this chess piece in the yard, know where it came from, don't know how it got there. Short day, easy photo, needed enough time for the NVPVV. Hope to see you there, Photographers.

© Benjamin Pecka. All rights reserved. Do not use without permission.

The NVPVV sessions have been going well.  Since our 30 day trial license doesn't expire until the 15th, another meeting will be hosted on Thursday, April 14th at 6:00 PM Central. 

That is 7:00 Eastern, 5:00 Mountain, 4:00 Pacific, 1:00 Hawaiian.

Now, the possibility of having our Photoshop experts available is questionable.  This session has not been discussed with Mac or Mal, nor have they chimed in.  We don't want to rely on tutorials to fill our "meetings" anyway. It should also be noted that taking steps to improve your photography does not start with Photoshop, that you should try to "get it right" before releasing the shutter, then opening it in Photoshop if needed. 

For this session, then, I'd like us to review and discuss how to better the compositions of images.  While there is actually no correct way to compose an image, there are steps you can take to make it more appealing to the eye.  Because of that, this session will not be a lesson plan, it will be a group discussion.

I will compile a set of photographs, probably pulling from articles previously published to the group.  Your help is appreciated, so please send or suggest images for us to review. 

Also, I'd like us to discuss future challenges, and the possibility of renewing/reincarnating the Newsvine Photo Pool.

The link and meeting ID are located in the group discussion tab (click the Newsvine Photographers tab directly above the comments section), or you may e-mail me for the information.  Detailed instructions for joining the meeting are located here. 

After a successful first meet, and a collective decision to take advantage of the remainder of our GoToMeeting trial, another Newsvine Photographers Virtual Vinemeet (NVPVV) will take place on Sunday, April 10th at 6:00PM CST.  It's possible A. MacArthur will be available to demonstrate Photoshop, where he will cover the processing RAW images and answer questions related to photography and image processing.

Instructions for entering the meeting are below.

Despite GoToMeeting being fairly easy and straight forward, this article will provide you with instructions, along with a couple screen shots, so you know what to expect when first joining a Newsvine Photographers virtual-vinemeet meeting.

If you missed last week, the week before or the original announcement:

If you missed last week or the week before:

A while back, almost exactly a year ago, and then again a few months ago, the Photographers began planning to meet in a virtual conference. An agenda hadn't been developed but there was an expressed interest in having the opportunity to get to know one another better, coordinate special efforts and discuss ways to step it up a notch or two.

The Newsvine Photographers Virtual Vinemeet (NVPVV) will take place on Saturday, April 2nd at 7:00PM CST. 

During the meet, there will be a demonstration of image editing techniques presented by MalamuteMan.  This will be done using Adobe Photoshop CS5 but the information presented will be broad enough to be relevant for other programs such as Paint.NET and Picasa. 

Although the majority of content presented at this session will be predetermined, if there are specific questions you'd like addressed or photographs you'd like Mal to demonstrate with during the meet, please submit questions in the comments section below or attach images in an email and send to photographers.newsvine.com@gmail.com, and we will do our best to accommodate.

On a different note, since Holly and I weren't impressed with our initial programs, we have decided to activate a 30 day trial of GoToMeeting for the first NVPVV.   It works well, is extremely easy to use, doesn't require a download and might be well worth purchasing if we continue to have these meets. 

An article requesting agenda items outside of Photoshop will go out next week and a brief overview of using GoToMeeting will go out Thursday, March 31st.  Invitations will be sent via private group discussion on that article.