Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a wonderful and joyous holiday season, and that you gained some gear in the photography department while avoiding gaining anything in the weight department. I want to thank you for electing me to serve as your Vice President this coming year. I am truly looking forward to it, and I want to emphasize that I really am here to serve you. If you have any ideas to make this club better, by all means, please let me know. I think we really are the best camera club in the country as is, but there's always room for improvement.
I hope that you had a chance to read Tom's posting about the local strobist group. When you read the national site, and look at the images on the flicker group, you can't help but be inspired. I have learned a lot from them. In December, Brian Babb gave a very basic class on balancing flash with ambient. This is typical of the type of knowledge that you could learn from them. If you are like me, in that you are still learning, and you are in need of some inspiration, then I also encourage you to check them out.
I want to take a minute to recognize Mike Zitek who has done most of the work putting this web site up. It has been a lot of work, and will continue to be a lot of work. Mike, I promise to keep my to do list for you down to less than what will fit on a 4GB compact flash card in the future! But keep up the great work! We all appreciate it! He and Brian Babb will be serving as our webmasters, so if you have any problems, comments or suggestions, please contact them.
Finally, I often get asked about my nickname, MrGibbage. It's a name that I have used for several years, beginning when I was younger and playing video games. In many of those run-around-and-shoot-up-the-other-guy type games, when you do shoot the other guy (and when you get shot yourself), the body parts that the video game creator so artistically rendered to fly across the screen are called "gibs" or "gibbage". Hence, my name was MrGibbage. The name has stuck ever since.
Skip Morrow, VBPC Vice President