A very quick blog entry to end this season and there are sadly no photos.

We had a rather welcome positive feel to this season’s AGM with sufficient members joining to ensure it complied with all our requirements for voting, etc.

So we give a very warm welcome to our new Chair, Alfred C., who was duly elected along with Chris R and David M as Treasurer and Secretary respectively, thus filling the chief officer roles that the club requires. We also have Mark B in place as our membership person and it is good to know that our other executive committee members have all chosen to remain involved and undertake various roles in the next season and beyond.

Perhaps the hottest topic in the AGM was the (ongoing) need to attract new members. We had many good suggestions, e.g., having a sign in the window when we are meeting in the hall, putting up a selection of prints in the small passage outside our meeting room, advertising via the Church magazine/media (this is work in progress), distribution of flyers to local locations where they will be seen, enquire with the Carshalton Artists Open Studios (CAOS) as to whether we can run something alongside their events. All told it was great to feel the strong confidence that we can maintain the club’s activities and of course, it is also rather helpful to have our Gift Aid payment arriving at season’s end! A boost for all of us!

Work continues on the 2023/24 programme with a revised set of competitions plus more theme and topic evenings that we can run throughout the season. We had a few comments about maintaining a monochrome element as a stand-alone category rather than seeing it get subsumed into “Open” competitions and I feel that is very much a valid case. To that end, we plan to have three mono evenings: one for postproduction, one for PDI and finally, one for print.

Of course, we must celebrate our 2022/23 Certificate winners. Well done to all who came in the runners-up spot below – I seem to have hit a hat trick! – and Congratulations to our winners:

2022/23 ROLL OF HONOUR

PROJECTED DIGITAL IMAGE OF THE YEAR (OPEN)

WINNER:                             MANDY B

RUNNER-UP:                      KEVIN B

PRINT OF THE YEAR (OPEN)

WINNER:                             ALFRED C

RUNNER-UP:                      BRIAN C

INTERNAL COMPETITIONS

PROJECTED DIGITAL IMAGE (OPEN)

STANDARD GROUP:           WINNER:                          KEVIN B

   RUNNER-UP:                 VINCE B               

ADVANCED GROUP:          WINNER:                          ALFRED C

                                                   RUNNER-UP:                 DAVE S

PROJECTED DIGITAL IMAGE (MONO)

WINNER:                             DAVE S

RUNNER-UP:                      ROSHAN R

PRINT

 OPEN COMPETITION:     

WINNER:             DAVE S

RUNNER-UP:      BRIAN C

MONO COMPETITION:  

WINNER:             MARK B

RUNNER-UP:      BRIAN C              

10 members then gathered at the Duke’s Head on the 21^st, to look back at and discuss the season. More conversations about the programme and membership ensued and those named above that were present received their certificates. There was, again, a positive feeling and we go into the rest of this Summer looking forward to our new season in our rather splendid home!

By the way, please note Coffee mornings continue at Flittons – the last Saturday of the month so will be on

• 24^th June
• 29^th July
• 26^th August

Have a great summer, please take lots of photos and see you all again soon!

Brian