When learning anything you can only get so far on your own. Reading books on the subject can help you get a little further but tends to be a one way conversation. Being able to critique your own work and the work of others is a core skill for someone who is looking to take their photography seriously. Photography clubs have always been a place for amateurs and professionals alike to share their experiences and learn from one another. In this age of the Internet however you no longer need to leave your armchair to share, critique and learn from other photographers. So the age of the photography club is over… right!?
Personally, photography can be a very insular practice, I walk the streets alone trying to capture my view of the world and distil it in a single image. At the same time I want to share what I have created and gain some feedback and perhaps recognition for my efforts. Very quickly I started sharing my images on Flickr and I was able to get a certain amount feedback with very little effort at all. I’m sure I could get more from Flickr but the level of separation between me and those who would critique my work isn’t quite what I am looking for.
The next logical step was to search for photography clubs in my area and living in Birmingham I wouldn’t have any trouble finding one. The problem is I have only recently returned to photography as a serious pastime and to be honest I wasn’t ready to meet with a group of complete strangers just yet. Its not that I am socially awkward, I just find that joining a group like this takes time and effort. You need to become a regular face before you truly become accepted. Maybe further down the line I will join a “traditional” photography club but until then I need a stop gap. Something that’s not quite an internet community and not quite a face to face photography club.
The answer came to me whilst I was thinking about something altogether different from photography. I have been using the the local community platform Meetup to help organise an agile software development group for a while now and it occurred to me that there is likely to be a community of photographers in my area. Sure enough Birmingham Photography Meetup has been going since June 2012 and has just over 400 members.
For me Meetup has just the right blend of the online and offline world. The Birmingham Photography community has regular face to face meetings in my local area as well as a the forums and photo galleries that you would expect from an online community. The online discussions and monthly photography competitions means that you could get everything you want from the website and never actually meet anyone face to face but personally I want more than that. I went along to my first face to face meetup at the beginning of this month and thoroughly enjoyed myself . I felt like I already know a bit about how the group works and who the key members are before I met any of them and that simple fact made things all the more accessible to me.
Plenty of existing photography clubs are starting to create their own spaces on Meetup which can only be a good thing. In my opinion the internet is great at making resources more accessible but you can’t beat meeting people in person. You wouldn’t want to merge the online with the offline world in all cases but as far as photography communities go it really does work.
The picture included in this post was my submission for the Birmingham Photography Meetup competition for January 2014; Modes of Transport. You can see the other images that I captured during the same shoot in the Birmingham Photography set of my Flickr stream.
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