WILLMAR — Like the world of photography, the Little Crow Photography Club has changed a lot since its founding. When the Willmar-based club first started in 1990, film was still the primary way of making photos. Photographers developed their photos in a darkroom and used a slide projector to show off their recent photos.
Fast-forward 34 years, and cameras are completely digital, with more and more people relying on their phone as their only camera. Most members have transitioned to use high-quality digital cameras. Most of the club is team Nikon, but others are team Canon.
Club members meet on the fourth Monday of every month to share tips, techniques, and photos they've taken throughout the month. They also hold a semiannual photo contest with different categories, such as creative, nature, and photojournalism. Members aren't in the club to make money; photography is something that they all truly enjoy.
"The only way you can make money is if you sell your equipment," Stephen Deleski said with a laugh. Keeping the club alive has been a challenge in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic hurt the club with the inability to have in-person meetings.
The photography industry has changed rapidly as well. Navigating and adjusting through those differences can be a tough thing. Changing scenery The photography landscape changed drastically when digital cameras became widely available in the late 1990s and into the 2000s, according to Telycam.
The shift to digital also lines up with when the club took a slight hit, according to Stephen Deleski. Many members shifted from film to digital in the late 2000s, according to Deleski's wife, Laura, who joined the club in 2008. "The shift was gradual," said Laura Deleski.
"The current challenge with (new technology) has been learning to manage all the files on computers and what software to use for editing." Learning and sharing tips and techniques to make their photos better has always been a big topic at their monthly meetings, more so now than ever before. But the shift to digital hasn't been the only thing that's changed in the world of photography.
Phones have become better and better at taking photos, and social media has become the primary way of sharing them. Taking photos with phones, however, doesn't have the same quality as taking photos with a camera, according to Stephen Deleski. "I print photos," said Deleski.
"People come in and say, 'I'd like to print that thing two foot by three foot.' And I say, 'it ain't going to fit,' or 'it's not going to work.' There's no quality.
" Printing photos is still a big thing for many in the group, but sharing photos online has been something that they've untilized. The club has a website, www.littlecrowphotographyclub.
com, where the semiannual contest winning photos are posted, and several members like to share photos on the club's Facebook page, where members and non-members can share their work, their different tastes and niches. Different perspectives A common thread as to why members enjoy being in the club is the different perspectives people have when taking photos. Dennis Benson loves to take photos at Willmar Stingers games, taking around 10,000 photos over the course of a season.
"I delete most of them," he said with a laugh. Stephen and Laura Deleski frequently go on vacations together, both taking their cameras and getting completely different pictures of the same locations. "We're both standing at the same scene, both using our cameras," said Laura Deleski.
"He tends to take more of the grand landscape. He'll get the mountains and the water, it's the whole thing. "I'm getting up on the texture on a leaf.
He was like, 'where was that?' I was like, 'right next to where you were taking the picture of the whole mountain.' I'm on the ground over here, and he's looking the other way." Laura Fostervold loves taking photos of nature because there's a certain level of difficulty to it.
"Wildlife photography is interesting because you've got to wait for that one duck to swim by and get it perfect," she said. "That's what I like. You can sit back and you're like, 'okay, that's good.
'" The difference in each member's tastes is the beauty of not only the club, but photography in general, according to Laura Deleski. "Everybody has their own eye," Deleski said. "Everybody has a style and what appeals to them.
" "That's what I like about the club," Fostervold added. "We have people that barely know how to turn the camera on, and we have people that have been photographing for decades. "We have such a variety of different artists in the club.
We don't all do the same thing." Uncertain future Despite the passion of its current membership, the future of the Little Crow Photography Club is uncertain for the time being. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the club hard in 2020 and 2021.
The club now has only 17 members, with the hope of finding a new president somewhere down the line. "We're looking for leadership," said Karen Kaufenberg. "Everyone has been president at least once, but we're looking for a new direction.
" For now, they have enough members to hold meetings and put on contests. But if membership continues to decline, the end could be soon. "We would hate to see the club come to an end, but that possibility is there if numbers continue to decline," said Laura Deleski.
The club is very open to new members, however, and offer a lot of help to beginners. "I've only been in the group for five years, but I was extremely new to cameras," Stephanie Leuze said. "We do get people that come up and say, 'I just got a camera, and I'd like to learn how to do some of it," Laura Deleski added.
"That's what we're here for." Photography as a skillset and hobby hasn't declined, and it isn't going away by any stretch of the imagination. It's just being used much differently.
Adjusting to that world can be very difficult for a club that is still old-school, but the hope is to attract new members sometime soon. "With our Facebook group, we hope that it will get some interest," said Stephen Deleski. "You never know what's going to all of a sudden trigger (them saying) 'Hey, I guess that looks like a fun group.
'".
