World Image issue 11 October 2014

Chairmans Bit - Your Society
The Peoples Photographic Society was founded
in September 2013. In the first couple of weeks
after we formed we had gained just 27 members
of whom three have since withdrawn due to
workload.
Although people come and go, our current
membership stands at 450 people across the
four society profiles. Many of these are
associate members through linked-in, World
image Magazine Group, and the Facebook
group. Also in the last few weeks, we have
established a blog page. Although still in its
infancy, it has started to develop a following.
The really pleasing aspect of the Society is that
we currently have registered and associate
members in 29 countries, but we are apparently
being followed in 47 countries.
The second count shows the overall number of
visitors currently 6397, this was included on the
29th April 2014 to show us how many people
are returning to view the site.
This number should increase much faster than
the first, but only if you take the time to revisit
the website.
We have changed the management structure of
the society so that we might better represent the
society when talking to companies.
In order to find new ways of promoting the
Society, we recently asked members to share
the post about the issue of the last magazine
from the open page at https://
www.facebook.com/1worldimage to their own
timelines.
Of the 200 FB members eight shared the post
and we reached 707 people. Unshared posts
reach an average of 30 people.
We would like to expand the Society, but we
can not do this unless the members help us to
do so. It may be that those we share with will
pay no attention but if we show enough people
it exists then the opportunity of expansion is
greatly improved.
With support and encouragement from Doc Rao
in Chennai, the Society began to grow and we
produced the first of our magazines in October
2013. It originally began as a newsletter for the
Society, the first issue contained six pages of,
well, not a lot really.
It introduced the Society to members and that
was all. Although I write some of the articles in
the magazines, by the time we published issue
two, the magazine had grown to fifteen pages,
with articles submitted by other members, Ian
Wickison in Brazil, Peter Hogel in Tanzania,
Alan Scuterud in the USA, and Phillip Tureck
in the UK.
Issue three was up to twenty pages and
contained the first of an ongoing series of travel
articles by Tina Andreasson (Sweden) and
another article by Peter Hogel.
The magazine remained at this level until issue
seven in April when, with submissions and
reports from the Photography show in
Birmingham, UK, the magazine rose to 31
pages. By this time Kev Sidford (UK), Tom
Coetzee (South Africa), and Robin Chun (UK),
had joined the ‘writing team’.
Issue eight saw some new additions to those
submitting articles, with Dave Walster (UK),
Paul Weijenberg (Netherlands) and Wendy
Longmead (UK). This was also our first edition
with a dual language article.
With the April Competition results, the June
issue of the magazine reached the giddy heights
of 45 pages. This also included the first post
Birmingham product review.
Peter Hogel submitted a stunning article on the
gold miners of Uganda which was worthy of
National Geographic, sadly this was tempered
with the news that a collapse at the mine had
killed a number of the miners.
Gary Bridger (Malaysia) joined the writing
team with an article on underwater
photography.
By now we hope that you have all read through
the July issue, even without the boost of the
competition results this reached 41 pages.
High quality articles from Derek Solomon
(South Africa), Peter, Kev and Tina, with a
review from Matthew Brooks and the inclusion
of some blog spots and reports from a couple of
steam fairs completed the line-up.
The magazine will continue running for at least
two years and is expected to continue to be
produced thereafter.
Website = photosociety.net Page 3 email = magazine@photosociety.net