We just finished our first full year of club and it went great. And we are working to make 2017 bigger, better and more PHOTOCLUBY! Below are the new leadership team, as well as our plan. Don't see something you want or think we should do? Tell us! This is a club for the members, of the members and run by the members.

2017 is NAPfS' second year and our first with a more robust leaderhsip team. Everyone please welcome your *fully volunteer* leadership team for 2017:

Print Competitions

2017 will be an exciting year for competitions at NAPfS. We will continue having monthly digital competitions with live critiques from rotating and visiting judges. There will continue to be two classes, Class 1 - Novice and Class 2 - Advanced. The club will add a print competition starting in July where club members bring physical prints on paper and the prints themselves are judged. Like the live critiqued digital competition, the print competition will provide everyone present with valuable feedback. It will also provide an oppritunity for club members to begin to learn and practice the craft of printing, taking what are mostly digital creations in their computers and turning them into works of real physical art.

People Choice Award and Photographer of the Year

In 2017 the club will repeat the "People Choice Award" allowing the club membership to select their favorite images from all the competition winners. In addition, the club will run a year long points based competition. Each image that places in a competition will earn the photographer points based on the award it receives. At the end of the year, the club will award the photographer with the most overall points, regardless of digital class or print the "Photographer of the Year" award. This competition will work in a similar way to drivers championships in automotive racing. Stay tuned for details on how the points competition will be scored.

2017 Themes

2017 competitions will include more themes. The themes will be dovetailed with our educational speakers and field trips. Months not listed are "Open" and do not have a theme.

• February - Oldies Night. There is no theme per-se, but the "taken in the last 2 years" restriction is lifted. Dig into your archive if you want and find those favorite oldies you made way back in 2014.
• March - Colorful
• May - Spring Explosion
• July - Moment of Impact
• September - Petal 2 the Metal
• November - Faces of Man
• December - No Normal Competition. Annual Party and Yearly Awards - People's Choice and Photographer of the Year.

To give everyone plenty of time to go out and make images for the 2018 themes, we've designated those as well, but not assigned them to months yet. The 2018 themes in no particular order are:

• Blur
• Night Time Photography
• Sunset/Sunrise
• Famous Destinations
• Faces of Man

We will have one member per meeting present a selection of prints of their choosing during the 7:00 to 7:30 meet and greet portion. Members will use this time to browse the images. At the start of the meeting, the exhibiting member will give a short (~5 minute or so) explanation of the exhibit prior to the meeting's other activities.

2017 will see more field trips. The club will host at least 4 official field trips. Our plans are to have the following:

• Spring - Lysts on the Lake. Knightly combat including full contact jousting, sword fighting and other western martial arts.
• Early Summer - Wildseed Farms. Visit a wild flower farm in the heart of the Texas hill country.
• Late Summer - Cars and Coffee. Tag along to Austin's biggest car meet with everything from modern hyper cars to classic rods.
• Fall - Viva la Vida. Photograph the Day of the Dead Parade in Austin.

Other members may suggest and run field trips. It's easy. Just let one of the leadership team know what you want to do. We'll collect some information and publicize it to the club members.

Thus far the club has existed mostly on favors from various club members and our connections. However, going forward the club will require some minimum cash flow to do things like rent venues and pay speakers small stipends for speaking and judging. By paying for a location, we can remove the ongoing labor of finding a location and have access to venues we otherwise wouldn't. This will free the leadership team up to concentrate on providing better educational and inspirational opportunities.

Starting in January of 2017, the club will collect dues of $24/year (that is ONLY $2/month). Competitions, field trips and other club sponsored activities (we have other stuff in he works!) will be "members only". The meeting will still be free to attend, but we will encourage those attending regularly to join. After all, it is only $2/month and it will help the club grow and flourish.

The Small Print: Memberships are not prorated. It's $24 whenever you join during 2017. For logistics reasons anyone may enter January and February's competitions under the assumption that they still need to pay since we will still be gathering dues from everyone. However, after February, non-member images will be rejected. New members may enter their first competition once their dues are received.

Stay tuned for information on how to official join the club and pay your 2017 dues.