Opening Remarks Year End Ceremony 2023

Presented by Catherine Honigsberg, June 8, 2023

Thank you everyone for attending and submitting your photos.

We have 80 paid members with 11 new this year. We had 95 paid members with 14 new last year.

We have a positive cash balance to bring forward next year. Thank you, Bruce Schaefer, our treasurer, for keeping track of our finances. Bruce continues to make improvements in our processes for tracking finances and updating budget projections. His insight is very valuable.

I want to thank our Vice President, Dennis Freeman. He is always there to help sort out situations that pop up, get out email blasts or assist in any way. Dennis oversees and helps develop our monthly Photo Forum with Pete and Dave. Dennis does a lot behind the scenes, including setting up our Year-End Event. I can always count on him!

Our website has been improved, updated and monitored by Will Rabinovich. Mark Paster has been available for consulting as Will has stepped up. This is truly a more behind the scenes endeavor, but I wanted to make sure everyone thanks them for all they do for this club.

Phil Boyer, our field trip chair, had a full schedule of field trips this year. Phil designed a schedule with social distancing in mind and included the September trip to Patuxent Research Refuge, the Rockville Car Show in October, the B&O Railroad Museum in November, Color by the Creek in Frederick in December, Udvar-Hazy in February, Piscataway Park in April and Cresson Sanitorium and Prison this May.

\Our program chair, Frank Gallagher, researched and scheduled Judges for our competitions. He managed to find some very strong and varied photographers who really helped us learn about photography and provided us with great speakers and opportunities for growth this year. Through Zoom we were able to go outside our local area.

Our Cable Release Editors, Sherm Edwards and Tanya Riseman, did a great job of producing a robust newsletter with good articles, showcasing our competition entries, and is our main source of information about the club’s activities.

Tanya was instrumental in getting the upgrades to our Constitution and Bylaws recorded and sent out for review. The review committee, Norm and Dennis, helped get what was presented and passed.

Our historian, Norm Bernache, keeps our records in order, including our points. Norm is an invaluable source of the club’s activities over many years. If you need to know where you are with your points, reach out to Norm.

Larry Gold was our Competition Chair and kept our judges on track and our competitions moving. Larry fine tuned our competition topics.

Our Membership Chairs Lisa and Marc Auerbach with Andrew Rein do a great job of reaching out to members, collecting information, and making everyone feel welcome and part of our meetings right away. They have come up with many new ideas to help the club and maintain membership in a difficult time where we do not meet in person.

Our directors Pete Morton, Bob Catlett, and Michael Koren help us keep on the rails. I can always depend on them with their wealth of knowledge and how things should work according to the constitution and bylaws.

Special thanks to David Blass and Kim Keller. They are responsible for our competition meetings and onboarding the speakers and judges.

Thank you all for letting me tell you about the dedication these members have shown that make this club so great.