It’s hard to believe, but today marks the seven-year anniversary of this blog and photo-sharing site. I started this project as a way to share photos and ideas about photography, back when Billie and I first began to winter in Palmetto Dunes on Hilton Head Island.
My photography activity has changed gradually since I began the blog, due in no small part to the Photography Club of Sun City-Hilton Head (PCSCHH) and the Photography Club of Beaufort (PCB). I belong to both clubs and to the Carolina Nature Photographers’ Association (CNPA). I have been most active in the PCSCHH, first having served on the Education Committee by scheduling classes for the club and most recently by chairing the Program Committee. As Program Committee chair I arrange speakers for each of the meetings of the PCSCHH.
My shooting activity and skill level has changed since joining the PCSCHH and the PCB. Before we moved here I did not have access to a photographic interest group which met regularly at the local level. There simply was not a critical mass of photography enthusiasts to make local meetings a viable option, so my photo club experience was limited to CNPA which met monthly in a regional meeting in a neighboring town. It has been a pleasure to interact with numbers of enthusiasts like myself and to participate in learning activities and print competitions sponsored by the clubs.
I joined the PCSCHH as a Novice photographer and through participation in the print competitions, classroom instruction, club outings, and creativity discussions I learned to be a better photographer. My rating progressed through Novice to Intermediate between March 2014 and January 2015 and from Intermediate to Advanced by the end of 2016. My progress from the Advanced level to the Expert level took only one calendar year as I won awards for my prints, and in November, 2017 I began to compete in the Expert category. I earned Photograph of the Year in my rating category in three of those years.
It has been a fun time, learning about the skill and the art of photography. I consider myself an advanced enthusiast of photography, fortunate enough to experience the thrill and satisfaction of producing award-winning images but also fortunate that I am not dependent on these images to put bread on the table.
Church of the Cross
This week we visited with friends from Boone, Asheville, and Durham, NC at the Colleton River Plantation home of mutual friends from Boone. This annual retreat has become a regular event in our lives since we moved to Sun City-Hilton Head, and this year’s edition was another satisfying hit.
We chose a book to discuss during our retreat, “A Religion of One’s Own” by Thomas Moore. We read the book before gathering in Colleton Plantation and Billie and I led the discussion during two morning sessions. We think the experience was appreciated by all, and the discussion seemed to focus our thoughts on trying to identify spiritual persons (not necessarily religious persons) in our lives. Give that a try–it’s not so straight-forward as it seems!
We went on a field trip to Old-Town Bluffton where we toured the Church of the Cross with the assistance of Allan Strange, a docent on duty there. This church is an historic Episcopal Church on Calhoun Street in Bluffton, SC. It was built in 1857 and added to the National Register in 1975.
Church of the Cross, Bluffton, SC
Our friends Ralph McCoy, Nancy Spann, Billie Rhyne, Emily McCoy and Bunk Spann listen attentively to our docent Allan Strange as we hear the story of this historical treasure.