Recently I constructed a portfolio of images of cenotaphs and Canadian War Cemeteries for my uncle Ken Collett in Regina. Some of those images are on exhibit at the Second Cup cafe on Phillip St and University in Waterloo.

It's a real challenge to create a portfolio. What does one include? Does it have a theme? If so, what is it (or should be)? How many images should be in it? A couple of years ago I had the privilege of having my photographs reviewed at the Elevator Gallery in Toronto by two well-known photographers of today, Michael Smith and Les MacLean. Both reviews were good feedback - but as one might anticipate, somewhat contradictory!

There's a quote I found on a web page last week, attributed to the famous French photographer Robert Doisneau. I don't know whether the quotation is accurate, but here it is nonetheless:

If I knew how to make a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

It's probably better in French; there is all too often an information loss in translation, whether the original be in French, Ukrainian, or any other language. Sometimes English doesn't cut the mustard.

I'd like to begin by first stating what this essay is not about. What it is not is an attempt to add to the collective wisdom of the photographic arts as to what makes a good photograph. There are certainly thousands, if not tens of thousands, of academic and/or professionals in the art world who have a much clearer and learned sense of what constitutes good art than I do. My formal education and work experience is in Computer Science, not fine art, so consider these expressed opinions of a photographic layperson in that light (pardon the pun).

For the past several years, Kevin Garrett has been managing most of the HGCC competitions, using a Microsoft Access database to store the metadata about each image (title, photographer, category, etc.) and a thumbnail of each. The database, which resides on one of Kevin's machines, provides two significant benefits. First, it retains the image thumbnails, the metadata for each, and the image's score, providing an historical record of each competition.

I've been working on the club's website for about a month now, and I can't help but applaud Alex Wilson's decision to use the Drupal framework to manage the Highland Glen site's content. There are a number of characteristics about the Drupal framework that are very appealing. One very useful thing is how the Drupal framework separates "look and feel" from functionality. This means that one can substitute one Drupal "theme" for another, without changing much (if anything) about how the website actually is constructed.