Camera Club. My Camera Club.

This post has been composing itself in my head for ages now. I finally got down to writing it, so here it is.

I like photography. I like photography because anyone can take a photo. Most people can take a good photo if they think about it enough (or if they take enough photos). What far fewer people can do is take an outstanding photo. That's what motivates me.

I was chatting about photography with a few colleagues a few months ago. One of them turned round to me and said "why don't you start a Wood Mackenzie camera club?". Initially I was dismissive, but then I thought about it a bit...

Prior to this conversation I had attended a local camera club a few times. Whilst there I tried to make some contacts in the 10 minute tea break, but everyone went from sitting down to standing in insular groups of 2-3 people, talking quietly with one another. The lectures were of an amazing standard, but something was missing: networking. A friend of mine is the Vice President of said local camera club, and what I think I said to him is that it's a superb and very well established camera club but it just isn't for me.

As I'm sure you're probably aware already, photography is a very popular hobby.  Some people even manage to make a living out of it. Whilst pondering my colleague's idea I was already aware that what seemed like a larger percentage of my colleagues than the norm also enjoy photography.

So I decided to start up a Wood Mackenzie photography club, also known as Woodmac Photographers. I did this for a two reasons. Over time it's become apparent that there are many more reasons to support the concept of a photography club, but I'll explore them another time. These are the reasons I started it:

1. It was apparent that my colleagues are custodians of a vast amount of knowledge. I wanted find a way to encourage them to share it.
2. I wanted to persuade a few people to join me on various photography excursions.

After speaking to a couple of colleagues to see if they were interested (they were) I put a post up on the intranet page for the Edinburgh office. I was overwhelmed by the response. Slowly but surely people got in touch, then before I knew it there were 11 of us! Then I got a response from someone who works in the Sydney office, who had decided to start up the Sydney contingent!

So I had a few members, but what to do with them? I ended up arranging two meetings a month, the first being an informal meeting at the office to chat about photo stuff and the second a trip to take a few photos. I'm not ashamed to admit that I kind of pinched this two meetings a month format from Livingston Round Table, it works well. 

To date I have been constantly amazed by the relentless enthusiasm shown by my club. All they needed was the idea of knowledge sharing and they were off. They might benefit from the occasional nudge every now and then, but they're genuinely unstoppable! To illustrate this: we've been setting ourselves monthly challenges to take a photo on a subject, and then we come back to compare them as a group. After a couple of months I noticed that the enthusiasm in the challenges was starting to wane. Well, I suggested that we maybe give the challenges a break for a couple of months. The response? "No! Let's agree on a challenge this month!"

A colleague who I worked with in the Edinburgh office before she moved to Australia was back visiting Edinburgh recently. She told me a great story about how she'd gone into the pub near the Sydney office to catch up with some of the guys, but she found a few people huddled around a laptop. They were looking at pictures of flowers, landscapes and food. They were chatting about things like 'composition' and 'converging lines'. Upon asking them what they were doing (in a few more words than that), they answered that it was the photography club. That I started. On the other side of the world!

I've learned a lot since I started Woodmac Photographers, which is great. What I think is even better is that I know that my colleagues have learned so much more from each other. We've taken lots of photos, many of which wouldn't have been taken if the club didn't exist. I'm proud of my club, and I'm excited to see what happens next.

So that's my story so far. But have you got anything you're passionate about? Yeah, you. Would you like to do the same thing? Try it, I think you might just be surprised by the results.