Graham, Limebrook Maldon u3a Photography Group Leader
"I have been running the group for just over 9 years and it has 15 to 20 members of various skills and equipment from mobile phones, compact, bridge and DSLR cameras.
Almost from the start, we have run a monthly competition where a subject is set and each member is invited to bring a photo to the hall, to keep the author anonymous each photo is given a number and the group then votes for their favourite by number. The author of the photo that receives the most votes is then presented with a small trophy to treasure until the next competition.
Unfortunately, Covid brought this all to an end, but we continued to meet each month via Zoom and the competition moved online. Each group member was invited to send me up to three photos on a set subject each month, I would then give each a number and, after a set cut off date, post them on our Flickr site for all to view.
I have, on a number of occasions in the past sent the link to the u3a eye to the group suggesting that they enter. It just so happened that [the] recent u3a eye subject Patterns coincided with our competition subject for that month. On noticing this I emailed the group encouraging them to send some entries and I was delighted to hear that Christine had her submission selected.
We do have a number of other activities through the year such as, producing a wall calendar from members photos, workshops on various aspects of photography and we have also had a couple of local professional photographers come along and give us talks on some easy ways to improve our techniques. I am pleased to say that the group is very friendly and we enjoy our hobby very much without getting too serious. You can view some of our more recent photos and competitions on our Flickr site . Please feel free to download any photos should you wish."
