Minutes:

Minutes: GDCCC GENERAL BOARD MEETING

Date: October 24, 2006

Meeting Place: Judy Yaker’s home

President Art Thompson called the meeting to order at 7:30 pm. There were 4 officers, 6 directors, and 11 representatives present.

Handouts:

· Minutes from September 7, 2006 Board meeting

· September 14 “Draft Proposals initially discussed at the September 7, 2006 GDCCC Board Meeting” Email from John Kroll

· September 15 revisions by Joe Sroka to “Draft Proposals initially discussed at the September 7, 2006 GDCCC Board Meeting”

· DPD Division Report from Dennis Sauve

Officers’ Report:

· Secretary: The minutes from the September 7, 2006 meeting were reviewed and approved with one change – add “for Digital Nature” in the line “Dennis Sauve proposed that we limit the use of digital borders to 1 color, 5 pixels wide for Digital Nature.”

· Treasurer: We currently have $11,783. New ribbons have been received. Not all of the Salon money is in, yet. Catalogs and forms need to be printed.

Directors’ Report:

· Prints:	The next competition will be November 6 at PPS. EOY judging will be Tuesday, November 7^th at PPS. We need someone to photograph the winning EOY prints for the banquet.
· Nature Slide:	The next competition will be October 26 at Livonia. Competition #6 will be November 15^th at Motor City with Oakland doing the judging. Bring all of the EOY entries to the November 15^th competition.
· Color Slide:	The next competition will be November 11 at Toledo. Bring the EOY entries. The EOY judging date hasn’t been set, yet.
· 2¼ Slide:	A memo has been sent to the GDCCC President – Club Directors can drop off their club member’s 2¼ entries at the CS competitions.
· Digital Projection:	All 6 competitions have been held. Dennis handed out the following DPD Division Report: 1. Summary of Entries / Medals / % Awards for each Division and Class: a. Monochrome General · Beginners 108 / 41 37.9% · Advanced 34 / 21 61.7% · Salon 37 / 26 70.3% b. Color General · Beginners 127 / 39 30.7% · Advanced 48 / 31 64.6% · Salon 47 / 21 44.7% c. Nature · Beginners 111 / 40 36.0% · Advanced 23 / 19 82.6% · Salon 45 / 35 77.8% 2. DPD Competition Schedule for 2007 a. Submit shift change schedule to arrange dates for the 2007 competition year. 3. Proposal to restrict the use of special characters in naming of entries. In the spreadsheets used for judging, special characters cause havoc and create hours of extra work to complete reports. If the file names are restricted to the use of letters and numbers and single spaces, I can output reports immediately following the judging of each class during the competition. This saves hours of manual data entry into the spreadsheets allowing more automation. 4. Proposal to eliminate the use of borders in the DPD Nature division. Using borders in the image adds the hand of man to the image. We have had images that the border has been the focus of the image and not the actual image. Impact of the image can be enhanced by using borders and this directly affects the score given. The image should be judged on the true nature story of the image and not something that was digitally added to the image. I propose this to take affect for the 2007 calendar year. 5. Propose to purchase the ProShow Gold software, as we have tested the software for a year and have not found anything that will function properly for the DPD competitions as well as ProShow Gold.
· Website:	Nothing to report

Old Business:

· DISP – Ron brought ribbons and labels, and Skip brought medals. Judges have been picked for 2007. The catalog and forms are being printed. We need to put packets together and mail ‘em out….

· In the 090706 Board Meeting Minutes, it was noted that John Kroll would “prepare an initial draft of the Digital Projection changes that were discussed during the meeting and distribute it to Board members via Email. We will then be able to continue the discussion via Email before the next Board meeting and hopefully be able to have fairly solid wording ready before the next Board meeting.” John Kroll sent out the initial draft of the Digital Projection changes on September 15^th. The current GDCCC DPD Rules and the PSA DPD Rules were included. An Email discussion between several GDCCC members followed for the next week. On September 22, John Kroll sent out an Email containing a summary of the DPD discussion notes received up to that point.

During the October 24^th meeting, there was a lot of discussion about what should and should not be acceptable -- cropping, flipping, sharpening, removal of “small” spots, removal of branches and phone wires, addition of anything, “minor” vs “major” changes, etc…. and whether or not to just follow the PSA DPD Rules. The following items were then each moved, seconded and voted on:

GDCCC Draft Proposal #1 -- Digital Projection Nature (NA) as written by John Kroll:

- Any color digital image that contains "Nature", where "Nature" is defined as Nature in all its forms, including the many facets of Botany, Geology, and Zoology. Human elements, if present, should be unobtrusive and enhance the nature story. Those depicting cultivated plants, domestic animals or pets, still-life studies, mounted specimens, museum pieces or groupings, or similar subjects are NOT eligible.

- Makers may perform any enhancements and modifications that improve the presentation of the image that could have been done at the time the image was taken but that does not change the truth of the original nature story. Cropping and horizontal flipping (equivalent to reversing a slide) are acceptable modifications. Addition of elements, removal of elements other than by cropping, combining elements from separate images, rearranging elements or cloning elements are not acceptable.”