I have been in the past a member of a couple of “Camera Clubs” the first in my home town and the second in Basel, Switzerland. My home town club I stayed as a member for a few years in my early twenties and I was eager from the more experienced photographers. The second I stayed for just two meetings before I decided enough was enough.
The main reason for me to join my local club was to learn as I have already said. I found that the members of this club were divided into very distinct groups, those who were more than willing to help you and give you the benefit of there experience and those who were just not. When you are young, just married and find yourself with a mortgage to pay, you don’t have a great deal of disposable income. I mention this as it didn’t help anybody having camera and lenses rubbished by more “experienced” fellow members, to say nothing of it being pointless.
Forty years later and vastly more experienced to say nothing of being able to buy whatever equipment I decided to join my second “Camera Club” this time not to learn but more as a social thing. I also believed that unlike when joining the first club, I would have something to offer and maybe be able to help people with less experience. However; more experience with a camera comes with more experience in life as it would after forty years. This meant sadly I had less tolerance for the more pompous members which I found at both clubs, hence the membership lasting just two meetings. One thing both clubs had in common was the need for members to show their work and have other members give there thoughts on it. Or was some felt tear it apart and often unjustifiably so, be that in English, French or German. It would appear that things don’t change as much as stay the same. See my blog “Nothing changes.”
So why is this blog called “Join a Group” I hear you ask? Well after sixty years of taking photographs and having moved back to the UK and after several lock downs I decided it was time to be more social as well as take more photographs. With this in mind I ventured once more and joined the very local “Photographic Group” and I am happy to say enjoyed doing so. Like most groups there are a wide range of members some older and more experienced and some younger with either none or very little. There are even some who having retired are just starting out. I found it most refreshing no sign at all of “camera snobbery” or “lens envy” although somebody did try and engage me in the Nikon V Canon discussion and like all other times they were told the subject was boring.
The meetings did not take place in a stuffy room but outside and on the move as we were taken to parts of the Village people who had lived there forty years didn’t know existed. I certainly learnt something new. As did one couple fresh with two brand new DSLR’s unpacked in their car as they waited for other members to arrive. I learnt about new stops to shoot I didn’t know were there and this couple found out, always charge your batteries before you go on a shoot.
I was happy to be able to help people and to be able to offer advice or even to offer to “lend” lenses to other members. I was also pleasantly surprised to find there were in fact people who share some if not all my thoughts on photography being fun and not some sudo religious experience, only to partaken by people with the correct equipment. So why not get out there and join you “Local Photography Group” you never know you may learn something, I did.
