Focus! Spokane Camera Club Displays Its Award Winners

The subject of the month stumps members sometimes. Once it was “ungulates.”

Club president Roy Dahmen headed to his unabridged dictionary to check that one. It means hooved animals. Members of the Spokane Camera Club wound up printing photos of horses, mountain goats and giraffes that month.

The Spokane Camera Club has been meeting for 63 years. Members scramble to shoot a photo to fit the subject of the month, such as night scenes, gates or celebrations. Then they gather to show their work and listen to critiques.

Each spring they sponsor a celebration called a salon where the best work of the year is displayed. This year’s salon was Saturday at the Fort Wright Commons.

Today we offer a selection of the club’s annual award-winning photos.

The club has more than 100 members, and although many are retired and all are amateurs, they approach their work with great pride.

Alice Garland, last year’s president, has traveled the world shooting photographs and has had two of her photos selected for the Sierra Club calendar.

“We try to make it fun,” says Dahmen. “It’s no big serious thing, but we all try to do our best and are proud of our work.”

Dahmen’s favorite photograph is one he shot of Fern Falls north of Pritchard, Idaho. Half the fun was traveling up Yellow Dog Road along Yellow Dog Creek to find it.

Another of his photos, called Winter Frost, was hung in a gallery in Columbus, Ohio, part of the Photographic Society of America’s exhibitions which appear all over the world.

Says Dahmen, “It was a nice feeling to think that perhaps someone you’ll never know or never see enjoyed your photograph.”

For information on joining the Spokane Camera Club, call Vee Nealey at 482-8660 or Norma Smith at 325-0334.