The State College Photo Club (formerly the State College Color Slide Club) was organized in 1947. By then, a few photographers living in and around State College had been using color slide film for almost a decade. One was Dr. George Johnson, a
visual-aids specialist in the School of Agriculture at Penn State. Recognizing all the budding photographers George worked with following World War II, he wrote, "We must do something more than just 'record' shots. We must build more human interest in our slides, make them more artistic and develop more skills in their presentation."
Under George's guidance, and with the help of five other original organizers, this Club was formed and has been meeting on the third Monday evening of each month ever since. Unlike many photography clubs, this club has been able to find meeting rooms without a rental fee attached. Some meetings have a short photography-related program prior to the competitive judging of member's images.
Over the past few decades, the Club has had 40 to 50 members. In order to adjourn our meetings at a reasonable hour, we limit to two the number of images a member may enter into competition at each monthly meeting. For most meetings, a single invited outside judge conducts the judging. He/she is expected to give brief oral reasons for the score assigned to each image. The Meeting Competition features two categories: Open; in which any image may be submitted - and the special Theme category. Images in the latter are expected to conform to the theme for that month. Ribbons are presented to the winners.
The May meeting features annual awards for the previous year's competitions. Recognition is given to those individuals accruing the most points during the year. The judging year begins anew with the June meeting.
With rising interest in digital photography, a digital component was added to the monthly competition in 2005 and the Club recently purchased a digital projector. Beginning in June 2006, meetings featured both film and digital entries in the main competition but in 2008 film entries were eliminated from the venue.
In addition, members and other registered users of this site may participate in our Online Competition by uploading digital images. Such images can come from digital cameras or can be from scanned slides or photos. Images uploaded for the online competition are displayed in the Photo Galleries & Contests module of the site. Voting on the digital images is open to all individuals who are properly logged in.
