Join us at our next (virtual) meeting and get to know the friendly folks of the Plano Photography Club.

Want to attend one of our monthly meetings as a guest? Please let us know via email.

Learn more about the PPC by watching this orientation video. When you're ready to become a member just click on this button: JOIN THE CLUB

Photo Activities and Galleries

2021 Topic of the Week Photo Activity - Week 3

2020 was a challenging year, but the PPC was a bright spot for me. I hope the club was able to provide something positive for you during 2020 as well.

COVID-19 required that we take a different approach to our club meetings beginning last May. Zoom became the new way to hold meetings and share our common interest in photography. Thanks to the officers and you as members that made it all work.

Meeting attendance remained high, while training participation actually increased and we were able to expand the educational opportunities.

While we were not able to have structured group activities, the Topic of the Week activity provided motivation to get out and photograph. In fact, you submitted over 1000 images that were shared on the club website.

2021 is here and as the new year progresses, I hope that improvements in the fight against COVID-19 will let us continue to share our passion for photography and allow us to get together, whether that be in meetings, activities, or maybe even a club photo trip before the end of the year.

We don't know what the future holds, but the PPC will be there. See you on Zoom for our first meeting of 2021 on January 21.

Looking forward to 2021.

- Alan Daniel (from the January 2021 issue of The FLASH!)

Parvin Stiles: A Road Trip To Big Bend and White Sands

Parvin Stiles

This land of ours is blessed with many beautiful state and national parks which share a sheer beauty that only Mother Nature, the artist, can create. A great way to see them is by road trip.

Many photography interests - including nature, landscapes, wildlife, and astrophotography - are available in abundance. This program will follow a road trip to Big Bend National Park, West Texas, and White Sands National Park in New Mexico. It will offer a few tips you may find helpful and hopefully encourage you to take your camera and hit the road.

Parvin Stiles worked as an electrical engineer for most of her 30-year career at Texas Instruments and is a TI retiree. She is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) and founded Aries Corporation, an independent energy consulting company, where she happily works part-time. Parvin also serves as the webmaster for the North Texas Association of Energy Engineers (NTAEE).

As a member of the Plano Photography Club, Parvin has served on the board in several different capacities. Currently, she is serving as the Program Vice President. Parvin and her husband Mitch have lived in Plano for 30 years and together have raised three sons.

A Selection of Parvin's Road Trip Photos

The Plano Photography Club's January contest is a ELECTRONIC competition with the theme OPEN.

Each club member may submit one photo to the competition. Remember - images that have placed in any earlier PPC contest are ineligible.

The maximum dimensions for electronic images submitted to the contest website are 4096 x 2160 pixels.

Your electronic submission must be uploaded to the PPC Competition Site before midnight CT Thursday, January 21, 2021.

For more detail on the January contest requirements please visit Competitions | Competition Topics.

For a full list of January winners, please visit the GSCCC competition results page. Congratulations to all those listed above.

Hugh Adams - who is scheduled to present a training class on street photography in March - has brought to our attention that the Arlington Museum of Art is hosting an exhibit of famed street photographer Vivian Maier’s discovered photography through February 21, 2021.

From the museum website:

Dating from the 1950s to the 1980s, Vivian Maier: The Color Work captures the street life of Chicago and New York, and includes a number of the artist’s enigmatic self-portraits. Maier’s color work was made during the last 30 years of her life when she began to work with a 35-millimeter camera during which time she produced roughly 40,000 Ektachrome color slides. This exhibition is the largest and most highly curated collection of Maier’s full-color photographs to date.

The museum is also hosting the current Texas Photographic Society street photography exhibition through the same date:

Street Encounters celebrates the art of street photography in the spirit of Vivian Maier, who captured the world around her like an unknown witness. [It is] a juried exhibition featuring the works of 50 photographers. The exhibit features works in both black and white and color.

Tickets for museum admission may be purchased in advance, and visitors must adhere to the museum's published COVID policies.

Happy New Year, PPC members!

The article excerpted below was written by John McIntire on Digital Photography School (click through on the link at the bottom to read the full text).

It's a thoughtful post that we might all review as we prepare for a new year of photography in 2021. Thanks to Jerry Schlesinger for sending it our way.

It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new to photography or a seasoned pro with decades of experience; at some point or another, you’re going to develop some habits and behaviors that are counterproductive.

Without getting these habits in check, they can have a negative effect on your photography, whether on your portfolio in general, your love for the medium, or your workflow. Sometimes these behaviors can even be destructive to other people in ways you didn’t realize.

In this article, I’ll share 14 guidelines for photographers – designed to deal with some of these counterproductive behaviors and habits that I’ve come across.

Now, none of these are rules, and I am not presenting them as such. If you feel that a guideline doesn’t apply to you, I am not saying or implying that you are wrong for feeling that way. These are merely my thoughts based on my experiences.

So without further ado, here are 14 guidelines for photographers to live by.