KVR Audio emerged many years ago as an excellent source of drumkits, samples, loops, sound banks and other tools for creating your own music. Many of the downloads are free and free of any complicated rights for commercial use.

Freesound Project is a collaborative collection of sounds and loops released under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. You have to check each track to see whether they are available for commercial use or not, but all tracks are available for non-commercial use.

BeatSuite offers a bunch of free royalty free tracks. The BeatSuite offerings come with a couple of caveats. The tracks are free for non-commercial use. The tracks tend to be lower quality than pay versions of the same loops. Registration is required in order to access free tracks.

Meanrabbit offers a bunch of great sounds you can loop or use to build loops. Many of the sounds included are part of the urban landscape, from trains to telephones, but there are also some fairly unique sounds available too.

Need a worry-free background track for a multimedia project, or just some new tunes to work into your daily mix? The Free Music Archive, a project of indie freeform station WFMU, has downloads and streams galore.

WnSoft PicturesToExe Deluxe 5.6 – Digital SLR Blog – Digital Camera Reviews, Ratings of Digital Cameras & Comparisons of Popular Cameras – DigitalCameraInfo.com

WnSoft recently announced the PicturesToExe Deluxe 5.6 application that lets you create slides which can be executed as screensaver (.SCR) files, HD video, DVD video disc or iPhone video. It supports 3D effects and Pan/Zoom effects and one can also password protect a slide show or assign an expiration date. PicturesToExe Deluxe 5.6 runs under Windows 2000/XP/Vista and requires 256-MB RAM and DirectX 9 or higher.

Bernard Seymour-Hall, our Treasurer, will be Vice Chair in 2009, which means that he will be our new Chairman in 2010. Irmel Dunaiski organizes the Audio-visual Section, and Paddy Howes is the Secretary and handles all the Outings. Steve Crane is our Computer and Digital expert, while Michele has been handling slide entries and tea, Marisa has been organizing print entries and JJ van Heerden has been our Technical Expert, as well as being the sponsor of our prizes from Picture Works, Stellenboch.

I am pleased to announce that Eric Palmer has agreed to serve on the committee – he is well known for his Photoshop expertise and teaching abilities, and brings young blood, as well as young ideas, to the Club.

I would also like to mention that Eric has won the Getaway Gallery’s First Prize for 2008 with his image of ‘Simonsberg’ … Congratulations, Eric!

Matters Financial: Bernard reports that we have a healthy balance in our account – this will be needed in the case of eventual upgrading of our equipment and for use when next we have to host Interclub.

Subscriptions for 2009 will remain the same as in 2008 ie. R220 per person with a discount of R20 if paid before 1^st April; R110 per person who are country members or students, with a discount of R10 if paid before 1^st April. Bank details can be found elsewhere on this site.

Tea and biscuits will be a minimum donation of R4,00 from next year.

Jannie, our car guard, is paid by us, and is reliable and helpful. Thanks to Paddy for organizing a Christmas hamper for him.

Outings: This year we enjoyed a number of successful outings, including one to Skurweberg (60kms from Sutherland) in winter. Paddy has quite a few ideas up her sleeve, including a weekend stay in Matjiesfontein. Other outings being planned are a visit to a wine farm, Gansbaai, McGregor and Camps Bay. Outings are a wonderful way of getting out to do photography in the safety of a group, as well as getting to know other members of the club.

Audio-Visual: Our AV department, steered by Irmel, has been active this year. As well as making our own presentations, we were asked to make an AV using 35 or so of Paddy’s scanned slides of the Richterveld, set to music of our own choice. The results were amazing in their diversity. 2009’s ‘set subject’ will be ‘Living from the Sea’.

Competitions: The list of competition subjects can be found elsewhere on this site. Our January subject ‘Silhouette’ will be judged by a lecturer from the Stellenbosch Academy.

Evaluations: A new twist will be introduced to the evaluation evenings next year. Hermanus Photographic Society has accepted our invitation to visit us on 11^th February, when we will hold a combined Evaluation Evening. Please note this date in your diary. We wait to hear from Tafelberg of their decision to join us too.

Slides: From next year slides are to be entered together with digital images under ‘projected images’. Bring your slides to Steve on the Wednesday evening so that he can add them to his list, and then show them on the slide projector, as normal.

Digital: Getting your digital images in to Steve by Tuesday 6pm is very important. Please follow the guidelines as set out elsewhere on this site.

Talks: It is not always easy to find speakers who are willing to travel all the way out to Somerset West – we do the best we can. Suffice to say that we hope to organize talks on ‘Judging’, ‘Calibration’ etc.

Prizes: Vouchers will be handed out to First Prize winners only. JJ has offered to sponsor vouchers for those who win First Prize in the four sections: Prints – Set Subject and Open; and Projected Images – Set Subject and Open. His business, Picture Works, is not a franchise – we appreciate his generosity. At the end of the year, a ‘Best Image of the Year’ will be selected (via the blogsite) and the winner will receive a print developed on canvas.

Interclub: Members recently discussed how Interclub could be improved. Our recommendations have been set out in a document which has been forwarded to all those clubs participating in Interclub. We do not yet know who will host Interclub next year. A new PSSA director still has to be appointed (Neil Swart has re-located to Gauteng), and when this happens we hope to be able to report to a facilitator who can evaluate and decide on a few new and improved guidelines for Interclub.

The R500 voucher received by HPS for coming joint second in Interclub 2008, was used to buy ‘lenspens’ for the 6 photographers who did well in Interclub – Andre(28 out of 30); Michele, Eric, Nicole, Ernst and Emma (all 27).

Blogsite: Instead of having a monthly newsletter, we are going to start a blog with WordPress.com, which is going to become our ‘ongoing’ newsletter. You will be able to click into it regularly, and will find all the information usually found in the newsletter, on the blog. Bear in mind that we also have a Flick site – http://www.flickr.com/groups/helderbergphoto to which all members may belong … Steve is the administrator and will ‘invite’ you if you indicate that you would like to take part … please join up – I seem to be the only one using it at the moment!

If you have your own flickr-site, or if you have a blog-site, or even a web-address, please let Steve know so that he can insert it as a ‘link’ on our blog.

Honorary Membership: It gives me great pleasure to announce that Nicole Palmer is being made an Honorary Member this evening. She is a past chairman of this club, and is well known for her teaching abilities, and presentation of popular workshops in Namibia and Stellenbosch. Congratulations, Nicole!