Author: Daniel Cossack

Open House November 15

Improve your promotional and communication skills in a fun, friendly environment!

Photo by Steve Kaye

Experience this for yourself. Join us Wednesday, November 15 at 7PM for the Lensmasters Open House. We meet at the Mesa Verde United Methodist Church, 1701 Baker Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.

Our guest speaker will be Steve Kaye, bird photographer extraordinaire and former Toastmasters member. Steve will present “Meet the Birds” with photos celebrating the extraordinary beauty of birds. Hear inspirational stories and how his Toastmasters experience helped enable his speaking career.

Snacks will be provided. RSVP on our MeetUp page at http://www.meetup.com/lensmasters

Lensmasters 2nd Annual Christmas Photo Shoot

Lensmasters Toastmasters Club meets at Mesa Verde Community Church in Costa Mesa, CA. Each year the Mesa Verde Church has a beautiful tradition of gathering for fun, food, and fellowship at the beginning of the Advent season. Families and friends have a relaxing time of it as they communicate, eat, and create together. The food was awesome: roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry salad, dressing, gravy, salad, and desserts, desserts, and more desserts. The crafts projects were extremely well organized and looked like a lot of fun. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the evening. Lensmasters Toastmasters club has joined in the…

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Richard Takes Division, Heads for District

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For the second year in a row, Lensmasters is sending a contestant to the District Conference. Our club president Richard Daugherty has won the Table Topics contest at the Division A contest on April 7, 2015 and is now on his way to compete with the top contenders in the District at the Founder’s District Spring Conference on April 25. The Division A contest was well attended and anticipation high as the best table topics speakers in the Division came together to see who will prevail to move on to the next level. No one knows what the question is…

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Gary and Richard Win Speech Contests

Congratulations to the winners of the Lensmasters Spring Speech Contest that was held last Wednesday March 4, 2015. Gary Olive won first place in the International Speech competition with a speech about the importance of photography. Richard Daugherty won first place in the Table Topics contest. Together they will advance to compete at the Area level contest for Area 6 in Division A. The Area contest will take place on March 21, 2015 at the United Methodist Church in Costa Mesa. We wish you the best of luck. Linda Daugherty was the first runner-up and Frank Larkin the second runner-up…

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Lensmasters First Photo Contest

  Lensmasters conducted their first amateur photo contest at the January Open House event. Congratulations to Jodee Christensen who took the first place prize with her photo entitled “Burning Zion”. We had a total of eight contestants participating, and our panel of judges were able to provide their feedback on how they were rating each photo. The first place prize was a book on lighting techniques and a free Photography Fundamentals class at iWink Studios. The second place prize went to Nancy Denman with “Iris Spring”, and third place went to Michael Gracias with his photo entitled “Safe Harbor”. The…

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Gayle Larkin Becomes A Distinguished Toastmaster

Photo by Richard Daugherty On Saturday November 8th, 2014, Lensmasters’ Secretary, Gayle Larkin, is presented with the highest educational award in Toastmasters, the Distinguished Toastmaster. Seen here with Distinguished Toastmaster Norm Stein (left) and Founder’s District Governor and Distinguished Toastmaster Linda Ulrich (right) at the 2014 Fall District Conference. Gayle and her husband, Frank Larkin, joined Toastmasters when his best friend, Terry McCann, said “Frank, why don’t you and Gayle join Toastmasters and do your CTM (Competent Toastmaster) before I retire in August. If you do, I’ll sign your certificates.” Terry retired after 25 years as the Executive Director of…

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How To Pose People

Our workshop last Wednesday (August 27, 2014) was focused on how to pose people and communicate with your model. I selected a young girl to model for us who has not had any prior experience modeling for photographers. Some photographers work with models all the time, but many do not. Our everyday photographers are usually photographing family and friends so I thought it would be a good idea to practice how to work with inexperienced people to get interesting photos. Choosing the subject of your photo is the easiest part of the process, but one should also consider what’s going…

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The Warehouse Meeting

It doesn’t happen very often but occasionally communication gets crossed and we get double booked for our regular meeting room. The community room at REI is a very nice meeting place with everything you could want in a meeting room, but is also very popular. When we arrived at our regular time the room was already in use by another group. The staff at REI apologized for the misunderstanding and offered for us to meet in an area in their warehouse in the back. We checked it out and while not ideal, it was rather cozy. Since our group was…

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