Great Falls Camera Club
Hello! Welcome to the Great Falls Camera Club Website. We hope you will visit us often as we work to improve and make additions to this Website. This is the March 1, 2021 update.
The Great Falls Camera Club(GFCC) was started on September 1,1946 with 8 members and has been the longest running active, functioning club in Montana, which we are very proud of. The club will be 75 years old on August 31, 2021, which is quite an accomplishment. We have had around 80 members in GFCC the last few years and welcome new members at any time. We are a diverse group of individuals from youth to senior citizens, hobbyist to professional with a variety of photographic interests. We like to share ideas and help each other become better photographers. So, come join our fun and friendly photography group.
We meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays, September through the 2nd Thursday of May, except the 4th Thursdays of November and December, when we only meet on the 2nd Thursday of that month, because of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our meetings are held at the Ursuline Centre, 2300 Central Avenue, in Great Falls, MT, on the second floor, in the Gold Room, at 7PM. The meetings usually last until around 8:30PM. We do offer the meeting on Zoom for out of town members or those who can not attended in person. Join us the 2nd and 4th Thursdays each month, except for November and December, when there is only a meeting on the 2nd Thursday. The Zoom meeting link will be emailed out to all members. The link also be available here on the website
The monthly contest pictures are submitted, here on the website, by the members of GFCC, by midnight, the 2nd Thursday of each month. There are three divisions, Advanced and Hobbyist, which are competitive, judged by an outside judge, and then given recognition for their quality and hopefully some constructive comments. The third division is called Critique Only and those photos are constructively critiqued by GFCC members, to help the participants make improvements in their photography. There are awards given for the Photographer of the Year and the Photo of the Year for the competitive Advanced and Hobbyist Divisions. The winners are determined by the number of points each member accumulates from the pictures they enter in the contests, with additional points given for placings. Every GFCC member may enter the Critique Only division. Members may choose whether they want to be in either the Advanced or Hobbyist Division. However, they must stay in that Division for the current club year.
The Objectives of GFCC are to Promote Interest in Photography, Share Photography Skills, Try New Photography Techniques and Improve the Photography Skills of our GFCC Members. We also provide opportunities for GFCC members to become better photographers through education, outings, competitions and other activities. We strive to cooperate with other clubs and organizations that have similar goals and interests.
To qualify to be a member of GFCC you need to have an interest in photography and be willing to learn and teach others. You must also pay dues of $15 for the membership year, which is from the last scheduled meeting in May until the end of the last scheduled meeting in May the following year. Dues must be paid to actively participate in the monthly photo contest and critique and to attend outings. New members are welcome at anytime of the year.
The first meeting of the month is usually a showing of the previous month's competition photos. Each monthly contest has a theme selected by a GFCC committee. There is also a short educational presentation at that first meeting. The second meeting of the month focuses on Education has a longer educational presentation by a GFCC member or a guest presenter.
Club Activity
Contests
December 'Night Photography' Contest - ADVANCED DIVISION
December 'Night Photography' CRITIQUE ONLY DIVISION
December 'Night Photography' contest - INTERMEDIATE DIVISION
Contest Results: May 2025 Best of the Best Hobbyist Division
Contest Results: May 2025 Best of the Best Advanced Division
GFCC Contest Categories for 2024-2025
September - Summer Photos –
Photos that have been taken
from May 1st 2024 to September 1st
2024.
October - Insects and Spiders – Insects are small arthropods that have 3 body parts, 6 legs, antennae, and usually 2 pairs of wings. Examples include butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, aphids, mosquitoes, fleas, etc. Spiders are small arachnids that have 8 legs and 2 body parts.
November - In the Forest – A forest is a large tract of land with a high density of trees that is the habitat for a variety of living beings including plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, etc.
December - Leading Lines – Lines that appear in a photograph that have been positioned to draw the viewer's eye toward a specific point of interest.
January – A Flower or Part of a/the Flower – A Flower is a single bloom (example – Petunia, Tulip, Lily, Tomato, Watermelon, Etc) or a single stem/stalk with more than one bloom (example – Geranium, Lupine, Snapdragon, Beargrass, Etc). Look up the term inflorescence to see the various possibilities. NOT an arrangement of the same kind of flower or a field/garden of the same kind of flower. Part of a Flower would be the Petals, Stigma, Stamens, Etc. Part of the Flower would only show a portion of a single flower.
February (Advanced Division) - High Key or Low Key
High Key – A style of photography that uses unusually bright lighting to reduce or completely blow out dark shadows in the image. High key images usually lack dark tones.
Low Key – Consists of shooting dark colored scenes by lowering or dimming the “key” or front light illuminating the scene and emphasizing natural or artificial light only on specific areas of the frame. This style is usually used to create a mysterious atmosphere.
February (Hobbyist Division) - Minimalism – Minimalism is distinguished by austere simplicity. It emphasizes sparseness and careful composition, shying away from overabundance of color, patterns or information.
March - Frost or Frosty – Can be Conventional Photography or Macro of frost.
April - Birds – Photography that focuses on capturing images of birds in their NATURAL ENVIRONMENT.
May – Best of the Best – Photos
must have been entered in a
previous contest.
Great Falls Camera Club is a photography club with our goal being to take the best quality of “natural” photographs. Extremely modified photos are not acceptable in our club.
We are here to endorse photography, as we have known it, not photography that is generated in a post-processing program, not a composite of several images taken at different times and/or places. And not images which feature Artificial Intelligence(AI) to produce photographs. Switching skies or backgrounds, or adding elements from other photos will not be allowed. “Synthetic Photography” has become an actual form of photography, and the photograph produced is not a real photograph, but an image created by a computer using prompts without using a camera at all, and that is not allowed in our club contests. However, there will be offered an additional category, Altered and/or Manipulated Critique Only Division each monthly contest.
The Post-Processing which Will Be Allowed in our monthly photography contests will be:
1. Cropping
2. HDR
3. Photo Stacking
4. Stitching
Minimal Changes that Will Be Allowed in our monthly photography contests are:
1. Lightening and Darkening
2. Changing contrast
3. Color or saturation
4. Sharpening
5. Minimal cloning of small, distracting elements to clean up a photo, like spots on your sensor and power lines
6. Minimal inclusion of the hand of man will be allowed in nature, wild birds and wild animals, as long as the subject remains as the main center of focus.
The following will NOT be allowed in our monthly photography contests:
1. Adding elements that were NOT there when the photo was taken is PROHIBITED
2. Composites using different photos shot at a different time are NOT allowed
The judge/judges for each contest will have the freedom to disqualify or reduce the placing of any photo that he/she feels was altered beyond those guidelines.