What is a Roll Up –  Why do we have them and where are we now?

The Formal Club Programme consists of Talks with invited speakers, Internal Print and PDI Competitions, Occasional diverse subject evenings, e.g.  Audio Visual, Workshops, Venture Group, Chairman’s Evening etc. These are all well planned in advance during the previous season by the Programme Secretary and work extremely well. There is a small additional charge for a Roll Up evening of £2 per evening if you attend which includes a drink and cake. 

With the Covid lock down experience, and the use of Zoom for our meetings it was felt that club members were missing out on the more informal aspects of our meetings to socialise, get to know each other better and spend time helping to integrate our newer members.

  To help rectify this, and hopefully add a new dimension to our club activities, the concept of the Roll up was launched with a pilot of three test meetings in the last quarter of 2022. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, Roll Ups became popular very quickly and during that first season we ad-libbed our way through twelve Roll Up evenings. 

Roll Up’s are now integrated into the Formal Programme at the rate of one per month and should a cancellation or postponement of a  programmed item occur, a  “Roll Up” will fill the gap.

To facilitate the open and informal nature of a Roll Up, the room  is arranged with tables in a herringbone structure with chairs on each side with the projector and sound system in place. The break is as long or as short as desired with cake, coffee and tea.

Regular feedback sessions explore how we can  improve the format and provide subjects of interest moving forward. 

Some of the items we have regularly are:

The Mini Series: where a member will share their experience on a subject with images and/or text on any subject related to photography. These are interactive with time available for questions, demonstrations and discussion, and typically last no more than 30 minutes. Some of subjects we have had in the past include: What is a Competition Judge looking for? What Are layers? What is sRGB colour? How do you mount a print? My safari experience in Africa? Images from my garden. Composition and cropping?  My Audio Video experience. and many more.

The Critique: Members are invited to submit images that they believe could benefit from a discussion with more experienced members with a view to getting the most out of that image for a competition, or simply to learn what post processing could do. 

Before and After: These are images that have already been worked on using post processing and by showing the original image and some of the intermediate steps to obtain the final result tells the story.

Competitions using only a Mobile Phone:  Entries are judged, and votes are taken, by the members present and all images are judged anonymously and  irrespective of the photographers level of experience. Click the link to see images from last Mobile Phone Competition.

Roll Up evenings will continue to be successful if we all stay involved by providing and sharing images, giving a short talk, sharing an experience or a photo shoot. The value is huge for our new members to help them and the rest of us to become better photographers and have fun doing it.