SSCC publishes a monthly newsletter, the Cable Release, from September to May each year. This publication keeps members informed about all planned activities, speakers, judges, field trips, articles, and more. Each Cable Release issue also features winners from the previous month’s photo competition.
The Photographic Society of America awarded the Cable Release second place (tie) for large club newsletters in 2013-2014 and even the newsletter-of-the-year in previous rounds of competition.
In 2016 the Cable Release became a web-based newsletter. We maintain an archive of the prior newsletters as published in either the web-based or the original PDF formats. The newer format has significant advantages from the previous hardcopy-emulating format when read with a computer, tablet, or smartphone. These include more efficient navigating through topics and more selectivity in reading just one article at a time. We also provide links to other articles within the SSCC site, and throughout the internet at large, for further exploration of topics of interest.
The Cable Release is organized as a high-level web page. It has a cover photo, followed by a Table of Contents (TOC) that includes the main sections of the newsletter. You can click on any section in the TOC and be transported to that section. You can return to the top from any point in the newsletter with a click on “Return to Top” on the bottom-right of your screen.
Key events are listed immediately after the TOC, and provide the dates, meetings, and field trips at a glance. The main sections are:
- “Meetings and Field Trips”: with individual descriptions of each meeting, competition, and field trip for the month.
- “Club News”: where membership news is shared, board meeting notes, photos from the last months field trips, upcoming socials, and other club-related items.
- “Features”: contains topics of interest that we wish to highlight. These can include particular workshops or events, articles about SSCC member accomplishments, or anything that doesn’t easily fit in “Club News” or “Member Articles”.
- “Conferences and Expos”: when we have several such events to include. Otherwise we will just add the odd item to the Features.
- “Member Articles”: includes what it sounds like – these are articles by the members on anything they wish to share.
- “Competition Winners”: includes the results and photographs from all our recent competitions, including the members’ comments about their photographs.
- “Classes, Calls for Entry, and Exhibits”: the last main section, and includes upcoming classes and workshops, calls to enter various photography competitions, and exhibits and events in the greater Washington Metro Area.
The Cable Release contains mostly new material, containing items befitting a “newsletter.” You will generally see introductory paragraphs on the primary page linked to full articles on their own pages. You can more quickly navigate to topics of interest without paging and re-paging through a serial magazine format.
One big advantage of the web-based design is that we have removed the size constraint for articles (for the most part). While we still want to keep each article concise and readable in a few minutes, we can now include galleries of pictures for an article rather than just a few selected photographs.
The newsletter can only be as good as the articles and information submitted by the Club members. Please consider offering reviews of your own photographic equipment or software. This could be a new acquisition or an old favorite that might still be available on eBay or other used equipment venues. People are also looking for photo tips and techniques, so please send me any that you might have. The web-based Cable Release is an opportunity to share your thoughts in a flexible format with illustrative examples.
If you’ve attended photo workshops, seminars, or classes that others could also be interested in, please send a review. It doesn’t have to be a full-length article. It can be a paragraph – please include a web address or equivalent for the organization involved so that the members know where to pursue it further. Try to focus more on the positive experiences that you’d recommend to others.
All members have an opportunity to submit content for Cable Release publication. If you want to submit something, and aren’t sure about any aspect of it, just ask! Here are some general notes:
- Please proofread your submission.
- Don’t worry too much about formatting, as it will have to be reformatted for the web pages anyhow. If you would like to do something more elaborate, we can probably figure out how to do just about anything.
- If you want to include photographs and have them appear in a defined order and place, use identifying labels in the text to indicate their location. We can also include a larger group of photos as a gallery. Also, please provide short captions for photos if you want captions.
- Any photograph that you provide that is bigger than 900 x 900 pixels will be resized to fit on the web page. Your photos can be sized to fill the width of the screen, they can be centered with no text-wrapping, or they can be placed to the left or right sides with text wrapping. We have lots of flexibility.
Any questions about the Cable Release, and SSCC member submissions for the Cable Release, are welcomed by the editor at cablereleaseeditor@ssccphotography.org.
Your editors,
Dennis Freeman & Sherm Edwards