The Photographic Arts Building in Balboa Park is currently closed for repairs. Meetings are running as usual. Alternate locations are listed on each event. See the calendar for details.
Members
Everything you need to take part in Darkroomers is on this page. If you just joined, start at the top. If you have been here a while, the handbook, the bylaws and the newsletter archive are at the bottom.
Start Here
Three things to do in your first month:
- Put the Wednesdays in your calendar. The club meets on the first, third and fifth Wednesdays of the month at 7:00 pm in the Photographic Arts Building. Doors open at 6:00 and the reception starts at 6:30. First Wednesday is a speaker, third Wednesday is the print exhibition and critique, fifth Wednesday is a member spotlight.
- Set up your SlickPic account. Every print you hang and every competition image you enter also goes up at darkroomers.slickpic.com. It is how the club keeps its archive and how your work reaches the website.
- Bring prints to the third Wednesday. You can bring up to three, and you do not have to wait until you feel ready. Getting a print judged is the fastest way to learn how to improve your photography.
What You Can Take Part In
Anyone can come to a meeting and watch. Members are the ones who hang prints, enter competitions and come on photowalks. Here is what each one involves.
Monthly Print Exhibition
Third Wednesday, every month. A guest judge critiques each print out loud and marks it Accept or Reject. Accepted prints hang in the gallery for up to two months, and only accepted prints are eligible for the year-end competition.
You can bring up to three prints, colour or monochrome in any mix. Prints go in the bins by 6:50 pm. Mounted, no frame, no glass, 18 x 24 inches at most including the mount, your name and the title on the back rather than the front. Upload a digital copy to SlickPic before the meeting.
Quarterly Competition
Digital, members only, a new theme every quarter. The images have to be shot during that quarter, which is the point of it: it gets you out with a camera rather than back through the archive.
Up to four entries, two monochrome and two colour. You will get an upload link by email when the quarter opens. Members vote online, and voting only works on a computer. Points carry into an annual standing.
Quarterly Competition Guidelines
Year End Competition
The second Saturday in January, judged from prints by three outside judges. You can enter up to ten images, and every one of them has to have been accepted in a monthly exhibition during the previous year. That is the reason to start hanging prints early rather than in November.
Digital files are due in late December and the prints themselves at the first Wednesday meeting in January. Late entries are not accepted. First, second, third and honourable mention in each category, and Best in Show goes on to represent the club at SCACC.
Year-End Competition Guidelines
Photowalks, Trips, and SCACC
Photowalks, workshops and out-of-area trips are members only and go on the calendar as they are scheduled. The club also enters SCACC interclub competitions, which are chosen from members' work rather than entered individually.
Getting Your Work Onto SlickPic
Digital copies of exhibition prints go into the club's SlickPic albums, which is where the archive lives and where the website pulls member work from. Uploads are quick and easy.
- Go to darkroomers.slickpic.com.
- Open Monthly Exhibition for the current year, then the current month.
- Choose Color or Monochrome.
- Click Add Photos, top right.
- Sign in with your personal SlickPic account and upload your files.
- Add a title to each image.
SlickPic shows your name and the title when someone opens the image. Uploading when logged into your own account credits you automatically. Quarterly competition entries go in their respective albums (Open Quarterly Competition, choose the year, then quarter, and choose from Color or Monochrome.
Direct upload links for all competitions will also be sent to members via the Darkroomers Monthly Newsletter.
Dues & Renewal
Dues are $55 a year. To join or to renew, fill in the membership form, bring it to any meeting and pay there. New members also sign their agreement to the bylaws.
Membership is not only dues. Members host the Photographic Arts Building in Balboa Park three or four times a year, take a turn on the cleaning crew, bring snacks, help the leadership team when asked, and vote on club business. Darkroomers is 100% volunteer run.
Member Handbook
Every guideline in full: exhibitions, all three competitions, and how the club works.
Bylaws
The rules members agree to. Revised November 2023, readable on the page or as a PDF.
Newsletter
Meeting details, deadlines and results.