Our first activity of 2022 will be a social event at Brickmakers Park in Oakleigh on Tuesday 11th January 2022 from 6:30pm. Keeping in mind the current COVID Safe guidelines we will leave it up to individuals to determine if they will be using the BBQ, just bringing their own meal or even just stopping by.

This is also the due date for our February competition, so bring along your print entries and make sure you are a paid up member!

Our venue:
Brickmakers Park
23-29 Stamford Road, Oakleigh 3166

Recently we held an exhibition of photographs from Valley Reserve in conjunction with the City of Monash’s NAIDOC week celebrations.

The displayed images can be viewed in our Valley Reserve Exhibition – NAIDOC Week 2021 gallery and the artist’s statements can be found in the catalogue (PDF 3.7MB).

Thanks to Vicki Moritz, John Noble, Trace O’Rourke, Michael Silverstein and Colleen Singleton for organising the exhibition.

In conjunction with the City of Monash’s NAIDOC week celebrations our exhibition of photographs from Valley Reserve will be open this week in the Track Gallery.

The photographs are inspired by Aboriginal knowledge, culture and the unique flora and fauna found in Valley Reserve, Mount Waverley. We engaged with Aboriginal Elders and artists in the lead up to this year’s NAIDOC Week celebrations, to listen and learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, culture and Country.

More information about the council’s other NAIDOC week activities can be found at NAIDOC Week 2021.

As we are all in lockdown for the next 7 days, it probably goes without saying, but all in-person WCC activities are now suspended until further notice.

Where practical and possible, club meetings, workshops etc. will be conducted via Zoom. This will commence with the June Competition Night next Tuesday, June 1st, at 7:30PM, on Zoom.

At our committee meeting tonight, we decided that while we will proceed with the judging of prints submitted this month (for June 1 judging), we intend to put these prints out for display at the July meeting (assuming we can meet in-person by then). There will be no print competition in July and you will not submit prints, or EDIs of same, by June 1 (for the July comp).

We are hoping that this will be a short interruption to our in-person activities and print comp. We will keep you informed via email, the website, and Facebook as we work through this together.

Please read our weekly WCC Watson Emails where we will confirm proceedings for the next week and whether they are via Zoom or in-person (if restrictions permit), as well as the details for each specific session.

Please stay safe and stay well.

We will now be holding a mix of in-person and online meetings. In general the competition night and workshop will be in-person at the Mount Waverley Community Centre, while our special interest groups will generally be online using Zoom but may use the craft room or Wadham House. Check the weekly Waverley Watson email or the calendar for details.

For in-person meetings we will be taking the following COVID safe precautions:

• Do not attend if you feel unwell.
• All attendees over 18 years of age must carry a mask indoors and wear these on entry and when not seated. BYO mask, although we will have some (cheap & nasty) ones if you forget.
• We will provide sanitiser & ensure attendees use on entry & through attendance.
• There will be several people on the front table, one of whom must record your attendance.
• The seating layout will be done by Monash Council staff to ensure COVID distancing. Number of attendees must not exceed 70 in the main hall.
• We have decided not to do Tea/ Coffee until further notice. If you like, you could bring your own drink in a bottle or Thermos.

Hello Everyone and Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a terrific festive season and, notwithstanding the continuing annoyance that COVID brings, I hope you managed to spend some special moments with family and friends.

We are planning a Picnic-In-The-Park event on Tuesday January 12th, starting at 5:30PM at Jells Park. Note that this event will only proceed if current restrictions remain in place and the weather cooperates. It is important that you monitor your email for any updates on the Tuesday.

This will be a catered-for event (with the option to BYO food if you prefer). To make this as easy as possible in the event of a cancellation, we are planning to cater with pizzas, a simple green side-salad, and a choice of two desserts. This approach means we do not have to order anything until the day of the event.

If you have decided to join us, the most important thing is that you must register for the event for the purposes of contact tracing and catering.

And don’t forget, we want to get our print competition up and running again in 2021, so please bring along your prints to the picnic event to submit for the February competition night.

I hope to see you at Jells Park on the 12th.

Putting a difficult year behind us, and looking forward to 2021, requires you to do one important thing… renew your membership! We are going to continue to use TryBooking for renewal as it was a great success last year.

Renew your membership right now and we’ll look forward to seeing you in 2021!

I am writing this as our club photographic exhibition draws to a close. And how good did it look! We received many compliments on the presentation and professionalism. The things that helped get these comments? Consistency of framing and mounting, labels and the very professional looking material that was handed out, not to mention the quality of the images. Many of our visitors had real problems choosing their “peoples choice” image due to the wonderful work submitted by our members.

While the increasing concerns about coronavirus kept the numbers down and meant modifications to our opening night I think the size of the gallery made it a reasonably safe space for visitors- drawn mainly from other camera clubs and the local community. We were also privileged to have Dr Gareth Syvret – associate curator from the MGA open the exhibition.

My thanks in particular to the members who committed to getting images onto the walls- and delivered 74 prints for us to hang! The opening and closing and roster to sit the gallery was staffed by members- thanks again. And in particular to the small group who put this together and those who turned up on the day to assist with the hanging. We have discovered John Noble is very talented in terms of framing and hanging, Ken Barnett is very good at putting wires onto the back of the prints (among other things) and Dave Sumner has a good eye for aligning the images!

And to the “committee”- Jen Fawkes, Rosie Hughes and the very talented Trace O’Rourke (labels) and Anthony Pearsall (marketing material, catalogues etc)- my special thanks. We have learned a lot and perhaps when we recover we could do it all again (in a year or two!!)

A count of the visitor’s votes for the most popular gallery image revealed our winner to be new member Daren Fawkes with “Mother and Child”.

If you missed the exhibition you can see the images in the In Focus Exhibition online gallery.