Wells WI January 2021 meeting report.

Our first meeting of the year involved some annual meeting business and reporting on the previous year.

Our secretary said we now have 54 members. Our former president Jane reflected on wonderful memories from pre-Covid times including a summer outing to the American museum in Bath, and fun times at Wells and Mendip Museum including Greek dancing with Yiannis and cooking with Adam Goodfellow.

After reporting that our finances were in good shape, our current president Anne guided through elections to key committee posts - she was voted back in as president, and existing committee members will continue in their roles until we can hold elections.

Our speaker was Ian Olsson, a talented photographer who specialises in weddings. He taught us his top five tips for taking great images on smart phones:

1. Be ready! Ian showed up how to simply swipe up from the home screen to turn on the camera, and to touch the volume button to take a photo.
2. Employ the rule of thirds. Ian showed us how to turn on the grid and use it to position the subject off centre.
3. Composition. Using lots of examples Ian demonstrated the effectiveness of framing, for example by taking a photo of a building with trees around it.
4. Focus. We learned a lot about how to use the tools we didn't know we had.
5. Exposure. Again, we were amazed to learn how easy it is to adjust tonal contrast and brilliance using the built-in functionality on our phones.

We had our phones ready and had installed a free app called Snap Speed. Ian showed us how to use its simple tools to edit images on our phones, transforming them impressively.

The most popular trick was learning how to edit dog photos to remove leads. Before he went, Ian took a photo of us all on Zoom for his own website.

Many members were sufficiently inspired to join our new photography group, which involves sharing images on WhatsApp on a different theme each month.

Members got a final reminder to vote for their choice from five prospective resolutions, mainly related to health and environmental issues.

Our totals have now been sent to County to be added to those of other groups and we wait to hear which potential campaigns will prove most popular nationwide.

We took up a member's suggestion to set up a new monthly discussion group, again on Zoom, for those keen to talk about a film or television programme they had all watched. It was agreed that the first meeting will discuss David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet.

New women are always welcome, and more information can be found on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Wellssomersetwi/

By Veronica Howe