Cancelled Outing

 Hello Everyone,
  Well, our photo club members decided to cancel our outing because of a little rain. Instead of going out to shoot new photos, I stayed home and prepared entries for the next few contests.
  I'm trying a new program out, it's Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3. There are a lot of good features, one I'm trying out for the next couple of contests, is a feature that softens the pixels and gives the impression that a filter was used to get the effect. Here are a few examples:

Getting Ready For Spring and Another Contest Season

Last Saturday my photo club held a meeting to get started shooting photos and entering contests for 2011. We decided to meet on the third Saturday of every month to go out on photo trips. The first outing will be this month on March 19th.

I'll be posting details of our outings along with photos of the places we travel to through out the year. Last year some of our members won gold, silver and bronze medals and many honorable mentions. One member, Yoon Daejin, won two golds, two silvers and other awards. His prize money totaled in the thousands of dolars.

We elected Mr. Yoon our club leader and another gold medal winner his assistant. Also, among our members we have three members who are already well known pro photographers. With their permission, I'll be posting some of their photos also.

The photo to the left was taken at our meeting. Mr. Yoon is in the foreground, yellow shirt, and I'm sitting to his left, wearing a hat, a few members were not able to attend but it looks like we will start the season with about twelve members.

My next post will be on the 21st, after our first outing.

Korean Photography Artist (사진작가)

Last year after entering my first Korean photo contest at Gyeongju City, Korea I learned about the Korea Association of Photographers (한국사진작가협회). This is the organization that certifies professional photographers in Korea. I found out the process to become a certified photographer (사진작가) and began the task of meeting all the requirements. My photography instructor at MokWon University told me I need to earn 50 points over a two year period in order to become certified. Points are earned through education, seminars, winning certified contests and through publication.

Contest points range from six points to one point depending on the contest and what place the photo wins. Usually the contests have one 1st place gold medal, 1 or 2 silver medals, 1 or 2 bronze medals, 5 meritorious mention, and 12 to 100 or more honorable mention winners. The number of entries usually range in the high hundreds to a few thousand.

My goal in 2011 is to complete all the requirements by winning a few more contests and by attending seminars.
 Here are few examples of the certificates and a photo fro the opening ceremony at the Gyeongju contest last June.