Deathed to club

There was an interesting conversation the other night at my photography club about the demise of this very club. The argument was that photo clubs have nothing to offer or interest young people, so the membership would grow increasingly old until we all stopped clicking. Actually, the conversation was a bit sad, but the idea was interesting. Are the days of the club declining? Or is it pointless to worry about a younger membership, as nobody joins a club until they pass thirty? Or is it just a sad endictment that photo clubs are the realm of the wrinkly with a chronic hardening of the opinions?

We did try to discuss what would tempt younger people (say, in their twenties) to join a photo club, but I don’t think we have anything to offer them. Why would you want someone to tell you how a camera works, when what they are explaining is how they used to work? And what benefit has this expertise to you? As cameras and phones get more clever and capable you can spend less time learning to use it and more time using it to get results. I was at a beacon-lighting bash recently to celebrate our new King’s wisdom in choosing the right mother (I was crowd control, to wrestle down any biddies who rushed the pyre). The beacon was a flaming basket held up against a darkening sky, dripping sparks into the dark foreground. My neighbour held up their phone and took a perfectly-exposed photo that captured the flames, sparks and evening shade. I was still fiddling with a compact camera that made it look like a daylight barbecue.

Perhaps there does come a point when you want to do something more or different with your photography. Online forums can be alligator pits of lurking mansplainers. Some club members are no better, but at least their physical presence and lack of anonymity moderates the exchange. But the function of most photography clubs seems to be to arrange speakers and hold competitions. The speakers are the best part – it’s a great way to see pictures taken by people who are good at it. Competitions are odd though – pictures are awarded points on a subjective scale of things like technical quality and composition. A typical speaker will just happen to mention that various ones of their pictures ‘have done rather well’. This means they were awarded lots of points in competitions. But, as Glynn Lavender of Shutters Inc says, the winners are really just the least-worst in the group. And then another judge scores the same pictures totally differently, proving that the scores are totally subjective. I wonder if it’s this aspect of photo clubs that puts people off?

Imagine that you reached a stage where you wanted to know more about your hobby or develop your skills. Join a photo club and you are faced with gifted speakers and competitions that you can’t hope to win and given non-actionable feedback (one comment I got was “I can’t understand what this picture is and I don’t like it” I should get that on a tee shirt). There is probably no programme of learning and no opportunities to try new things. There may be few or no opportunities to just talk about pictures. Anything that doesn’t fit the standard model for a picture (in focus, grainless, nicely arranged) is dismissed.

AI-generated by Pixray from the description puzzled photographer.

What we could do is swap the competitions for show and tell sessions (or see and say?) where the photographer gets to say what they saw or intended and the audience get to say how well they think it works. With encouragement to bring new versions of the same picture back to see how they progress. As for speakers, get people who can talk about why they took their pictures and what they were trying to show. I don’t care if it won prizes at Crufts – I want to see better ways of seeing and showing.

Do you see what I saw?

Maybe if we did this we would have something that more people would be interested in? Otherwise we are doomed, with smartphones on one side and AI generated pictures at the other, sharing nothing and clinging to our competition scores for validation.