This club that I belong to has occasional meets that usually occur at other Saturdays other than the scheduled first Saturday of each month.
A recent one was a model shoot in a nearby park. One member set up his lights and brought a posing stool. Another brought some various props, and one photographer's adult daughter volunteered to pose for everyone. This took place in a lesser used lawn area of the park near the trees and this shoot lasted several hours, with occasional breaks, usually when one photographer had finished taking his shots and the next was about to start. The model could stop and take breaks whenever she needed to as well. Those of us with portrait shooting experience helped those without the experience, and all had a great time doing this.
A night shoot of the city lights and traffic from a bridge was interesting as well. Experiments in long exposures, and high ISO settings, as well as comparisons of the telephoto lenses took place on this night. Again with the more experienced taking time to help those new to this.
In the late Springtime there is a Sunflower Farm with many acres of Sunflowers and many photo shoots of these flowers or of those posing in front of them takes place during these annual Springtime trips. The farm allows these photo shoots, as long as they know when we wish to be there. A nature walk with cameras on a relatively easy trail through a nature preserve was also held last Spring.
There has been some talk of a train related photo shoot. There is a State Transportation Museum about a 20 minute drive from here and the property is a former railroad repair shop and rail yard with many full size restored cars and engines to see and photograph. A live steam engine train ride around the property is also available on the weekends, but the repair shops are frequently busy every day with paid as well as volunteers working on the restoration or repair of all of the engines, cars, and equipment that is there. I believe that this trip will happen in the early Springtime of 2026.
I took the attached photo at this railroad museum 25 years ago with my first really professional Sony 2.1 megapixel digital camera, a Mavica MVC-FD98 (about $1200 USA cost back in 2000). Not much of a camera when compared to what is available today, but it was about the best digital camera available in June of 2000. It used 3 1/2" floppy disks to record the photos, and one disk could hold four full resolution photos. I had a large fanny pack with about two dozen floppy disks in it that I wore during any photo shoots. If the floppy faced right it was fully used. If it faced left, it was ready to use. Each had a disk number written on it, so I could write notes of the contents of each as I used them, on a small pad in my shirt pocket. The shots from this camera could be printed up to 8 X 10", but became pixelated when enlarged much past the 8 X 10 size. This shot is of the live steam train that was being used for the train ride that day, and it was moving when I took the shot, however it was only moving about as fast as someone jogging. This shot file is directly from the camera with no editing at all, and it's a jpg shot with many artifacts that will show if enlarged more than 8 X 10", but it's quite impressive for those early days of digital photography. I used to be intimidated by anything related to laws and the like as well. But once I came across a guide on
Law I started to view it more calmly. You might want to give it a try it could help you.
Contact some of the photographers in your area and see if you can get them interested in starting up a meetup type club something like ours, if none exist today. Also, do your best to find a place where you can have your meetings, hopefully at little or no cost. Where we meet does provide some lunchtime business for the food court after our meetings and they provide the space and tables for us to meet before the lunchtime rush of customers. We consume quite a bit of coffee and sweet rolls from that one coffee shop, so they open early for us too.
Charley
