Thank you for coming to our callout on Thursday! We appreciate your interest during this unprecedented time. We are excited to finally meet all of you. Here is a recap about the callout for those who could not participate, and we will provide a preview about what is coming. If you cannot find the information you need in this post, feel free to check out our Q&A page here. 

The Purdue Photography Club is a place where you can learn different techniques about photography as well as meet and connect with some cool like-minded people. We have a variety of events planned for this semester including meetings, social gatherings, and Adobe workshop sessions. Our in-person meetings are at 6:45 pm in Third Street Suites Room 159. Our virtual meetings are at 7:00 pm on Zoom (be sure to check the email newsletter or website for a link and more details). Please feel free to join us at any of our meetings, regardless of callout attendance.

On September 17th, we will be having our first, virtual meeting on “Learning Camera Basics.” In this meeting, we will be talking about the basic elements of photography, such as aperture, shutter, and ISO, as well as other useful techniques for first-timers. In addition, we can talk about photography accessories that can help improve your photography. If you just started experimenting with photography, we strongly recommend you to join us for this meeting. However, if you are a more experienced photographer, you are more than welcome to join us to socialize. Addtional details will follow.

The following meeting will be on Astrophotography. If you ever wondered how to capture the majestic Milky Way on your camera, this meeting is for you. You will not only learn the techniques to capture the beautiful Milky Way, but also how to plan to take astrophotography photos. We will show you methods to find subjects in the night sky, find a dark site without light pollution, and more. A combination of these skills will provide you with the knowledge for an astrophotography trip if you choose to plan one yourself. To see our full meeting schedule, please visit our weekly meetings web page.Aside from learning about photography and meeting others, we have a lot of people that reach out to our club looking to hire a photographer. If you are interested in making money through photography, then our Facebook page is a good place to start.

We hope to have a few trips planned this semester; however, due to the ongoing pandemic, it is likely that we cannot plan anything as a club. Instead, you may join others on GroupMe for any spontaneous trips. If you decide to do so, you will have to follow the appropriate social distancing protocol. There have been astrophotography trips during the summer, so we encourage you to keep an eye out for these opportunities.

Regarding our facilities, we have a darkroom and studio located in the basement of the Purdue Memorial Union (just for you!).  To follow PPHC regulations, we are only allowed to have at most two people per facility, and masks must be worn at all times, including models. It is a privilege for us to be able to use the facilities during this time, so we expect those who are given access to respect and follow the rules. If you are interested in using these facilities, please send us an email for further information. If you are found not abiding by the rules in place, we will unfortunately slam the hammer and report the incidents to PPHC.

Luckily for us, we have an officer, Richmond, who is an expert on film this year. If you are into film photography, we can supply you with the appropriate chemicals to develop film and enlargers to process prints.If you ever encounter any problem, our facility manager, Richmond, can help you. For the studio, we have two new lights with a hot shoe trigger, four new backdrops, benches, stools, props, a couple of product photography light boxes, some macro extension tubes, and more. The studio is great if you want to take some portraits or headshots. In addition, the product photography light boxes are ideal for small items, and well..., product photography. 

Any Purdue student, staff, or faculty can join our club regardless of skill level or photography gear. We would like to build an inclusive community of photographers. We do not have membership dues, but we will gratefully appreciate any donations. It would really help us during this difficult time. In addition, if you want to have access to the studio or darkroom, the yearly fee is $20. If you pay for the studio and darkroom access, you should receive an automated email with the instructions on how to access our facilities. 

Thank you for reading our first blog post of the Fall 2020 semester. We will continue to post in our blog throughout the semester to recap our meetings in case you missed it. Feel free to look at our past blogs as well. If you have not already, please sign up for our email list on our homepage. If you do not receive our weekly emails, please check your Cisco Quarantine and add our email to your safelist to make sure you receive future emails.

If you want to join our GroupMe to discuss photography topics with other members, please click here. We will not be sending any notifications for club events in the chat, so it can simply be used for creating conversation.

Lastly, you can follow us on our Instagram page! We would love to feature some of your work. Just tag us or use the hashtag #purduephotoclub, and we will take your submission into consideration. You can join our Facebook group where you can ask questions or share some of your photos as well.

Once again, thank you and see you next week!