First, my apologies to folks whose images suffered from cropping when projected last night – I was able to spend a little quality time with my laptop and the projector after the meeting, and hopefully we won’t have that issue again. Thanks for your patience!

On to last night’s winners:

May 2013 Portfolio (Stills)

1st Place Open – Kevin Lee
2nd Place Open – Kelly Bracken
3rd Place Open – Fletcher Forbes

1st Place Novice – Phil Garner
2nd Place Novice – Walter Bassi
3rd Place Novice – Vickie Elson

Video Minicomp: “Air Breathers”
1st Place – Walter Marti
2nd Place – Walter Marti
3rd Place – Anastasia Laity

1st Place May Portfolio: Kevin Lee

Have you been on a dive trip lately? Maybe it was someplace far away, maybe it was the LAUPS boat trip to Santa Cruz Island. In any case we want to hear about your trip and see some pictures or video that you took along the way.

We will be adding a new show-and-tell opportunity to some of our meetings starting this month. Anyone who wants to talk about their latest trip please let us know. The first two people to sign up are welcome to present a 5-minute trip report at the May meeting on Wednesday May 15th. The goal of this is not about how good or bad your photos might be but rather to let the other club members see some cool places they might want to visit too. Please let Bill or Anastasia know if you want to present a trip report. It could be done in a slide show format, a video, or simply getting up and showing a couple of pictures and telling us where you were, what you saw and whether the rest of us should try to get there.

The second half of the meeting this month is going to be a more or less free-form workshop particularly aimed at providing our more novice photographers feedback and tips from the more experienced folks in the group. Bring in your rig; we will have some table top setups of typical reef scenes (OK there will be little plastic fishes and things) so that you can practice with your camera/strobes/housing. We will also have some flash meters available to test your strobes to make sure they are doing what you think they should. Our goal for the workshop is to make sure anyone who has questions about their camera/strobe/housing/settings should get answers to those questions. You video folks will have their own caucus, so bring your rigs and questions too.

May Competitions:

This month’s competitions are: Portfolio for stills, and “Air-Breathers” Minicomp for video.

Please submit your entries using the upload page. The deadline for Portfolio entries is Monday, May 13 at 11:59pm (note early deadline).

SCUBA Show

Don’t forget to submit files that you want printed for display at the Scuba Show. Deadline for files is May 24.

Also please let Kelly know if you are able to volunteer to work at the LAUPS booth on June 8 or 9.

View all the winners: April 2013 Minicomp Gallery – “Flowers of the Sea”

OPEN
1st Place – Kevin Lee
2nd Place – Tony Frank
3rd Place – Bill Van Antwerp, Kelly Bracken

NOVICE
1st Place – Walter Bassi
2nd Place – Merry Passage
3rd Place – Vickie Elson (x2)

VIDEO
1st Place – Nannette Van Antwerp
2nd Place – Nannette Van Antwerp
3rd Place – Matt Berry

Congratulations!

1st Place April Minicomp: Kevin Lee

April Guest Speaker: Steve Williams

The Los Angeles Underwater Photography Society’s (LAUPS) 17 April meeting will include a presentation by Wetpixel moderator and FinFoundationImages.com curator Steve Williams. Steve will be describing five ways to think differently about improving our imagery based on the model that was developed on one of the Wetpixel threads titled “Good to Amazing” and illustrated by his photographs and the images of the contributing Fin Foundation photographers.

Please join us in the Times Mirror room of the Natural History Museum at 7:30pm, Wednesday April 17!

April Minicomp: “Flowers of the Sea”

Please upload your entries for this month’s competitions by 11:59pm Tuesday, April 16.

Parking Lot Reminder

Please note that we have been asked to resume parking in the staff lot on the north side of the museum – see the meeting info page for directions.

Thanks to everyone who made it down to our March meeting last night!  Paula Butler gave a fantastic presentation on Wakatobi Resort, one of our sponsors and a famously amazing dive destination!

A few announcements for folks who didn’t make the meeting:

NEW MAILING LIST: LAUPS has a new mailing list to be used for discussion among members (the current list will continue to be used for LAUPS announcements only).  Learn more  about it or sign up here, or by clicking on the “Mailing Lists” link on the left-hand sidebar of this page.

WEB SURVEY RESULTS: If you’re interested in seeing some of the results from our web survey, go here.

BOAT DIVE: We still have one spot left on our boat dive April 14, on the Peace to Anacapa – sign up here!

As for last night’s minicomp, we didn’t have enough video entries to run any video comps, but the photo comp results are available in our gallery:

OPEN:

• 1st Place: Ferdinando Meli
• 2nd Place: Kelly Bracken
• 3rd Place: Dana Rodda

NOVICE:

• 1st Place: Walter Bassi
• 2nd Place: Dan Norton
• 3rd Place: Dan Norton

1st Place Open: Ferdinando Meli

Congratulations!

Please join us in the Times Mirror room of the Natural History Museum at 7:30pm, Wednesday March 20, where we will be joined by this month’s speaker Paula Butler, Guest Experience Manager for Wakatobi Dive Resort & Pelagian Dive Yacht.

Wakatobi Wow! Featuring a slide show of imagery and video presentation, overview of Wakatobi Dive Resort and Pelagian Yacht, followed by a Q&A and trip sign-up.

In a peaceful and undeveloped corner of Indonesia, just a little over two hours by private air service from Bali, you’ll find yourself at the center of the planet’s most extraordinary dive areas. Wakatobi Dive Resort is on a small island called Onemobaa in Southeast Sulawesi.

Home of the world’s most pristine reefs, Wakatobi offers what many claim to be the “best diving in the world.” Wakatobi resort alone boasts more than four-dozen dive sites and the first class dive yacht, Pelagian, offers access to dozens more. Between the two, you’ll visit new, unexplored areas and encounter more marine life, with a greater variety, than you’ve ever seen before.

Please join us to learn more about one of our favorite photography destinations!

March Minicomp: “Echinoderms”

Please upload your entries for this month’s competitions by 11:59pm Tuesday, March 19.

Parking Lot Update

Please note that we have been asked to resume parking in the staff lot on the north side of the museum – see the meeting info page for directions.

View all the winners: February 2013 Minicomp Gallery – “Odd Couples”

OPEN
1st Place – Kevin Lee
2nd Place – Dana Rodda
3rd Place – Kelly Bracken

NOVICE
1st Place – Vickie Elson
2nd Place – Merry Passage
3rd Place – Phil Garner, Vickie Elson

VIDEO
1st Place – Nannette Van Antwerp
2nd Place – Anastasia Laity
3rd Place – Walter Marti

Congratulations!

1st Place February Minicomp: Kevin Lee

Please join us in the Times Mirror room of the Natural History Museum at 7:30pm, Wednesday February 20!

Our speaker will be Leslie Harris from the  Museum of Natural History – our very own “worm lady” who can almost always be found at our meetings anyway!

This time she’ll be at the front of the room, telling us about some of her recent fieldwork.  Leslie was one of the scientists who recently flew up to Washington State to chase after a Japanese dock torn free by the 2011 tsunami – and the various marine organisms it brought with it!

Our monthly minicomp topic is “Odd Couples” – Remember, you need to be a current LAUPS member to enter the minicomp, so please renew your membership if you haven’t already!

Please submit your entries using our upload form no later than 11:59pm Tuesday February 19.

Hope to see lots of you there!

Please help us improve LAUPS by taking this 5-minute web survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KBXCDXN

Include your e-mail address to participate in a drawing for a $100 gift card to a local dive shop, or $100 off one of our 2013 LAUPS boat dives.  (Your address will not be used for any other purposes.)

We’re interested in hearing from people affiliated with LAUPS in any capacity – you don’t have to be an active member!  We’d love to hear from lapsed members, or from people considering joining in the future.

Thanks!

Here is the breakdown of changes the board decided to make to the competition and awards processes this year.

• You may submit up to two (2) entries in each category you enter (used to be 3)
• We are adding a novice category for video.  We hope this encourages some of you who are just starting out shooting video on your SLR, compact camera or GoPro – we’d love to see it!
• Points from the minicomps, edited video, shootout, and portfolio competitions will all count towards overall award placements at the banquet (instead of separate awards for each).  The points values for edited video, portfolio and shootout have been raised to give these competitions more weight than the minicomps.
• The ‘Dave Nesheim Memorial Shootout’ will once again take place over an entire month (same as last year), with no constraint on exactly when/where/how you dive as long as it’s in local waters during that month. The shootout will remain a separate award category but also count toward your overall point total.

For the complete new rules (and a list of all the minicomp categories for this year), please visit our updated rules page.