Chapter 1 - The ReasonNow now, this journal of mine have been long overdue and since PPC brought up the topic, let me start off where he last stopped; the future - which was one of the key factors that motivated me to strive so hard for MJC>Photography. Planning for the future is very important and I realized from my past experience that short term planning is ineffective. Leaders faced with short terms in office, often tend to neglect planning for medium to long term, partly because they are not able to see through their work plan or that we are worried that their descendents will not carry on with it. The other reason is that, at the end of the day, they still need results to put into our portfolio. Such is the very real situation that many leaders in various organizations face. Personally, I think at the end of the day, leaders needs to strike a balance between short and long term plans because we cannot do without either.
Recently I heard that the some of our members think that my batch and Quent's batch are like super garang. One of the many reasons why we were super garang was because of the crazy dreams we had back in the days when we only have 2 Mac, that old dry cabinet with 3 miserable Nikon DSLRs and lenses no faster than f/2.8. In layman's terms, we were just another ordinary photography club in another junior college. Back then, me, Eunice and Chee with Pres, (she doesn't really like standing close to us, maybe cos Chee's saliva often deal collateral damage within a 1 meter range) standing by somewhere - often have crazy visions (which we would get really high on for hours) of the club today (maybe even more crazy than today). And it was the drive to create these crazy visions into reality that made us super "on". Oh, did I mention that getting a new bigger club room was on our list of crazy visions?
But I believed that each of us had our own different personal reasons (you have to ask them to find out) why we wanted to fulfil these crazy dreams of ours, but mine was to develop the club for the future. To know why I wanted to build the club for the future, we need to take a step back to the time when I was still in secondary school. Back then, (I don't think many of you know, but then again, many of you couldn't be bothered) I was the chairperson of 2 CCAs and it was quite crazy. Members from both sides would accuse you of spending not enough time with them or that I am only just interested in helping one CCA and not the other, etc. And to side track a little, that's the reason why I do not encourage people to join 2 CCAs or take up council or house comm; because you can never truly handle both CCAs at the same time. I remember back then, I was quite the ubiquitous person in school, running everywhere for my 2 CCAs, a side effect of which, made me rather famous in school... Till this day, every time when I come back to MJC for CCA open house, my juniors from PRSS will come up to me and ask, "Hey, you're Kingston rite? Ya.. I know you, you're that media club guy..."..-.-... to which I would usually reply, "haha, thx.. But erm, do I know you?" and they'll just say.. erm I was your junior... or erm, no la.. I just see you running around all the time...lols..
But that was totally beside the point. Although many people respected me for running 2 CCAs simultaneously, at the end of the day, when I stepped down, I was never satisfied with the way the clubs were when I left them, simply because the CCAs under my leadership never made progress since I stepped in. Then I started asking myself, as a leader, if I can't touch the lives of my members through my actions, no matter how many CCAs I pursue, everything becomes meaningless. On paper, leading 2 CCAs simultaneously is like so grand, but it doesn't mean anything to me if I didn't make a difference; in that case it wouldn't have mattered if I was there in the first place! Lols..
There were many reasons why things never changed, some of which could be attributed to the teachers, Exco and members, but I think most importantly was that when I stepped in, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do and have a clear vision of the end. By the time I realized this and wanted to start making changes, I had only 2 more months till I stepped down. So after my O-levels, I started pondering, how I should go about making a difference in my new CCA in JC...
Chapter 2 - The Change So there I was, sitting at one of the back rows in the now study room, then, still the photog club room, looking around at the photog club members and all of a sudden, my attention was drawn to Eunice and Chee who were playing their stupid virtual tennis via Bluetooth on their Sony hand phones. I was like, damn.. if those two make it to Exco, my photog experience will be shattered - and mind you, they were like some hyperactive kids, deprived of games and shouting like 4 year olds. So it was then I realized if I wanted to have a wonderful photog experience, I would have to create one for myself, from scratch and since I'm at it, why not do it for everyone else and those who have yet to come in.
So after Mr Tee made all the members run for Exco - and by then I'd long figured out that Pres, Eunice and Chee would be joining along the ride with me. At this point, I must add that they have all be very instrumental in laying the foundation of the club. By now, I bet you all are rather bored of my descriptive descriptions, so I'll save you all the details. Basically once I entered Exco, I realized that as President of the Photog club, I could like do anything I kinda wanted - if I didn't want meetings, very possible, however if I wanted to make a difference, it was even more possible; which was a long long way back from secondary school where I was just a figure head, without much freedom to move.
So after I settled down from feeling all mighty and what not, I started coming up with plans to raise Photog club from the ashes. It was quite simple really, increase cash inflow, provide opportunities to develop our members and build a name up for ourselves. A lot of CCA's Exco tend to neglect image building, because they often feel it's a waste of time with no real returns. But that is so not true; I realized; after much thought, that ice breakers and playing wacko isn't going to promote club bonding and cohesiveness, however an identity that people can relate to, will. Hence my first agenda of my very first club meeting (which started at 4pm; because of some unspeakable reason, before I finally had a chance speak) was to come up with a club logo and motto. And of course the first to object was my Dear Chee... he was like "Aiya! What for?? Waste times la.. This one very bo liao.. I don't see the point in wasting time doing this, etc..." But of cause I eventually got my way (I don't always do), with a little help from Eunice. Today, you can see the fruits of our labour, whose seed was planted 3 years back and I don't really know how many of our members actually feel a sense of belonging when they see the club logo or believe in the motto, but I know I do, and I'm glad someone else other than me do. Actually, I'm sure all the members do, even though it might just be that tiny little feeling deep down inside...
Chapter 3 - On Progress
Up till this point, I must say that the club has grown from strength to strength. With every new batch of Exco coming in, there have been many unique developments. However, with every new batch of Exco coming in, there will be more and more stress on them to excel and as juniors, we don't really want to let our seniors down; but I just want the future Excos to know that you should never be afraid to break out of the shell because ultimately, the club is yours and not ours and its future is not for us to dictate. Sometimes I think that Photography>MJC has grown to such a point, that real growth cannot be simply measured in terms of profits or number of project or exhibitions anymore. At this stage, it is no longer about the money, it's all about the experience of the members and this I must gave credit to Ellie. Personally, I don't quite understand why people tend to discount growth in areas like cohesion, bonding and sprit. Although they are not tangible, personally, I think any growth in these areas can be considered a major improvement in the club; simply because expansion in these areas is very difficult. It is worth noting that although my batch and Quent's batch were good at making money and creating projects, we never really got the time to work with our members. Back then, the members and Exco never got along very well and were never too enthu about our projects, partly because we had to leave them out because they pretty much couldn't keep up with our pace. Heh, I still remember almost all our members went MIA for our first prom night glam shots project. We had to progress fast so the club could progress faster, kind of a sacrifice you could say, but today, the situation is different, when I went back this year, all the members really seem truly enthusiastic and without asking, I knew that they all really enjoyed being in the club and it really shows to what length things have changed.
This brings me to the point just after our first few club meetings. I'm not sure if any of you know this but I'm quite a people orientated leader; if given a choice to develop people or develop project, I'd choose the former. That's why I always like to go back for club meetings to see the members and like the other time, sit in for the interviews. Also, it was exactly over this point, where our Dear Chee and I had our first differences.
I still remember that day Chee and I was walking to the canteen, (by this time, I think we all (the Exco) knew that we had the drive and potential to bring the club to further heights) Chee was rather upset that in my original plan that I wanted to focus on developing all the members and have a end result similar to what Ellie managed to achieve. However, Chee's point was that, we didn't have the resources nor time to develop so many people, (we only had 10 members, including the Exco at that time) and just focusing mainly on the exco would be sufficient for us to further develop the club. Of course, I wasn't too happy initially with his idea, partly, because it would create a rift between the members and the Exco and it would kinda spoil the member's experience. Eventually, I changed my mind, simply because we really didn't have the resources or knowledge (Jun Sen was probably busy with his studies at that time, if you know what I mean^^) and if we tried, we really might not have enough time. So I guess you could say we had to put aside a large portion of the member's interest for 2 years so we could rapidly develop the club, but I'm glad to see Ellie taking the initiative to start putting our member's interests at heart. I think for now, we can slow down a little on club development and spend a little more time on our members.
Chapter 4 - The EventsSo back to the storyline, we had our first exhibition in Sept, Photo Salon 2006 and I'm pretty sure quite a number of you are already used to preparing for exhibitions in 1-2weeks, but so just you all know, we took an entire 2 months to just print and mount our prints of 60-70. First it, it was due to our wonderful teacher JS, who taught us the ultimate mantra of printing... if you think it's off.. even just a hint purple, dunk it and REPRINT!!! For every photo, we'd had at least 2 reprints, and mind you, we didn't use the big blotter back then, we were like using only 1 S9000 printing on Canon Photo Paper Pro, which costs like $23 for 20 pcs, haven count in ink yet. When we first started off, we printed only on Weds, den Wed and Fri, by the last week; it was like everyday till 7pm... lols... Secondly, Chee loves to crap... and he does it in front of the fresh prints. I think you can imagine the rest. We had a wonderful collection of excellent chromatography specimens of all colours at the end of the exhibition. Lastly, was that with only 1 S9000, printing at A4 was miserably slow and had to be printed one by one... Today with the Epson Pro, prints can be like out in 1 day?!?! Albeit with less vibrant colours and matching, but still acceptable. However, till this day, I still like the colour of the Canon prints, especially on Photo Paper Pro. Bleahz...
Yes, that was deliberate Canon advertising, so people, don't complain I'm a nikonian. Prom Night was one of our first money making projects. We made a wonderful-though-now-seems-less-impressive-amount of $250. No, we didn't have backdrops or studio lights. All we had was some miserable SB-80 which sucked full time on the D100 which would get all noisy aft ISO 400 which was coupled to ultra slow focusing lenses which could not decide whether the current focusing point is focused or not. We literally had to run round and round the ground asking people if they wanted a group shot, only to be declined when they we ask them if they wanna buy...-.-.. and trust me, the prints look nowhere as nice as the ones from the last prom. WB was horrible, especially on the D100, exposure was inconsistent, flash ran out of batt and often OOF. Now on to the OOF point, haha, it was mainly due to once again my Dear Chee. Our Dear Chee, that night had just experienced the power of a prime lens, a 50mm f/1.8 to be exact, JS's lens to be even more precise. He also experienced the power of the D80, and if you ever used a D100 or D70 for that matter, it was a major, major difference. Shooting at ISO 1600 at f/1.8, our Dear Chee felt like he was the king of the world, compared to us miserable men who were stuck to the D100s shooting at ISO 400 at f/5.6. So now high on the "latest tech" fever, he happily ran around asking everyone to pose for group shots. It was all well and dandy till he decided to barge in and "take over" whenever we would try to get a group shot with our miserable D100s.
Imagine you already having gathered the group together and you are already looking through your viewfinder until suddenly you see something huge lumbering towards you. Chee suddenly shouts,
"Ehh, come, I shoot I shoot!!"
"But I'm already going to shoot..."
"But my camera is so much better than yours!! Hiya I shoot la, you go find another group to shoot.." And he did it quite a few times to everyone, including yours truly, PPC
So naturally we, including PPC got quite frustrated. But never mind that, the most hilarious part was that little did he realise that whatever he shot at the end of the day, turned out to be well, OOF!! lols.. Well, at f/1.8, I guess he was kinda asking for it.. I guess after that night, our Dear Chee learnt quite an important lesson... But trust me, till this day, Chee still remains the insistent, incessant bugger that he has always been.
Chapter 5 - The Rift Now, some of you may have already known that Chee and I have not always been on the best terms. I think it was mainly due to our conflicts in ideals. Personally, Chee is quite the "I-won't-take-your-answer-for-an-answer-kinda-guy"; so he won't stop at anything to achieve his aims. Not that I'm saying it's bad, on the contrary, without it, our club would not have progressed at such a rapid pace. While on the other hand, I'm quite the idealistic guy; and I hate to achieve progress at the expense of others. I hate underhand methods, which so happen that our Dear Chee is full of. And it bugs me to a very very large extent, people abuse their powers, which once again, our Dear Chee find irresistible not to. So often enough, I was pissed with him and his insistent, incessant power abusing ways. It was already bad enough that our personal believes were causing friction, our Dear Chee had to come along and snatch work off my hands. Hah! I bet some of you would find it quite hilarious that we were actually fighting over who gets to do what part of every single project. The best part was that Chee would want to 100% of it. Great isn't it? To have someone to do everything for you? So great that you wouldn't have anything to write in your testimonial at the end of the year. And as I already mentioned, I hate to do underhanded things - like putting in projects in my testimonial which I had no part of.
This stupid pointless conflict, (the best part of which, our Dear Chee never realized why I was so pissed with him) lasted for most of the first half of 07, jeopardized a number of our major projects, such as the JC1 Mugshot and the Inter-JC exhibition. It was quite bad, so bad that at one point, our dear Eunice was our middleman, passing messages for us. Lols!! During one of the crucial discussion which led up to the start of the JC1 Mugshot project, we were all, including PPC, in the club room discussing about the likely problem we would face in this project. Our Dear Chee, being the ever-resourceful one, (no sarcasm intended) already thought through the entire projects, potential flaws and likely solutions, (at that time, me and Chee were like racing with each other to come up with new projects, crazy right?) except, that he still haven't had a solution to automate the process of taking one raw picture, cropping, aligning and multiplying it and saving it in a format that was ready for printing. Of course, we all now know that that can be done with Photoshop Actions, but at that time, no one knew, not even PPC... I knew, I knew that I could solve that problem easily, but I had a choice, whether or not to release that crucial bit of information that could potentially tilt the scales either way. To tell you the truth, I was rather envious (ok.. very envious) that our Dear Chee came up with such a wonderful project that could potentially earn SO much money!! And when you know you have the power to make it fail, all of a sudden, you feel very very evil...
So our dear Chee was with PPC thrashing out the details and partly trying to figure out a solution, while I was sitting on the workbench at the other end, quietly considering my options. I could very well, thwart his operations and leave me feeling very happy and satisfied, albeit for a moment or two or I could jolly well give Chee the last piece of the puzzle he needed to complete the set. By that time, I was already quite exhausted with my long drawn out battle with Chee and to me, at the end of the day, as mentioned at the beginning, the future of the club was more important to me. I simply didn't want to have a repeat of my secondary school days. Well, looking at the club today, at least I still can say that I'm still glad that I made a right choice back then.
Since the beginning of my term, I knew our Dear Chee would be one tough guy to work with. It was never my intention to control my Exco and whenever possible, I always tried to make it a point to let them have the freedom to do anything. That's because I believed that restrain will only stifle creativity and at such a crucial stage of our development, we needed every single ounce of creativity we could garner to pull us through this trying period. On many occasions, I had a strong urge to restrain Chee and his uncaring attitude, but every time I never had to strength to do it, because I always felt that it would be the wrong move. It would be like putting your prized milk cow in a barn feeding it hay instead of letting it roam free in the grassy hills. I guess I saw something in Chee that convinced me that he was necessary for the development of the club. I don't really think I need to explain why he was so crucial, quite a number of cash projects was handle by him, so you get the idea. However, I must add, I also had a wonderful Exco, Eunice, my Great Grand Secretary of Photog was a very good at erm, SKW.. hahahaha... Somehow, I don't know how we would have survived without her. Pres was equally crucial in taking care of all the cameras and rubbish me and Chee (mainly Chee) leave all over the club room. I mentioned this when I first started my term as President and I'll say it once more, that I was very happy to have such a wonderful Exco to work with, albeit our differences, we were still able to make such a difference in such a short time.
Well, time passed and soon the juniors came in, the hostilities died down. Even so, things were still quite cold between us; it became quite evident that we would not be in power forever. Our time was coming to an end and even our Dear Chee realized that. Soon, it was time to start looking out for potential Exco Members. Now I bet the J1s this year would be very very interested in this section.
Chapter 6 - Running for Exco Okies.. for this version, I'll just say, girls don't like to be compared. ^^
I know many of our J1 Photogers would want to run for the marathon, but I just keep it short and sweet. Exco in any CCA can be rewarding. Every Exco in every CCA allows you an opportunity to flex your leadership. So please do not look down on Photog Exco just because you think that something else is so much better. That is so totally not true. Photog Exco can be very rewarding if you put effort into what you do here. Seriously, I'm not telling you this just because I don't want you to run the marathon. I'm saying this because I know it is true. I won't go into the details, but from what I have seen in my 2 years in MJC, you'll just have to take my word for it. If my word is not enough, you can ask all your seniors who have been in Photog Exco or even some of those who are not even in Exco.
Of course with that in mind, I want all the potential J1 Exco to know that running for Exco is not just some "play play thing". We are looking for serious and motivated people to further develop the club and expand in ways we would have never thought of before. If you think doing what your seniors have done is enough, no, we expect you to be above us and most importantly, be above all. (Okies, I know it sound familiar... No prizes for those guessing it right.-.-...)
Now that you know what our expectations are, I just want you to know that, you do not need to have all the qualities I mentioned above. All you need is to aim for them. Let me tell you some of the stories I have seen during the Exco elections. Often than not, people like to smoke their way through elections. You can smoke your members, but trust me; you can't smoke your seniors. After you have been in Exco for a year, you know what is possible and realistic and what is not. Some of the things which you do not want to say for your speech:
Having more flash presentations (Me and Eunice nearly went crazy over that statement. Trust me; ONLY say that if you know how to use flash proficiently. And if you pass the first criteria, I'd dare you to say it - of course its goes that you have to fulfil it too. :) )
Having more CIP projects (Look, I know it's all fine and dandy, But exactly how many more CIP projects do you want until you are satisfied?)
Having more exhibition (As above, how many exhibitions do you want till you are satisfied? Of course the more the merrier, but do you and your members have so many pictures to exhibit?)
Having more outings (OK... Nothing really wrong with that, but you know, Singapore is a small country, how many place can you visit before you run out of places? Besides, if you seriously think about it, do you really have the time? As Exco, you have a lot of other commitments to fulfil too. Trust me, outings will be the last thing on your mind once you are sworn in.)
In short, too much of anything is bad. Eat in moderation. Otherwise our dear photogers will get too bloated.
Basically, just avoid generalizing things. If you really want to do something, I'd at least expect you to put in a fair bit of thought into it. Please think if what you propose is actually feasible and not just mentioning it for the sake of mentioning it. Actually, without even mentioning all of the above, they are already expected of you. I think what we really want to see is your direction for the club. In what way you want to expand/develop the club. Exactly how you are going to do it (It is very easy to build castles in the air), the resources needed, time frame and how would the end result benefit the club as a whole. PPC often like to say I'm mean or I like to "tekan" people. Wait till the day I record what you all say during your interview and elections and a year later I play back for you to listen. You will realize how many hilarious things you all mention. We aren't very interested in how much skills you have or what software you know how to use, (if you know, points for you) but you don't have to pretend to know Flash or Photoshop. I noticed many of you say you know how to use Photoshop or Flash, but you don't know what is Masking or Actionscript. In this case, you only heard of Flash and Photoshop, not know how to use it. In any case, it doesn't even matter if you know or you do not know. All we want to see is your determination and enthusiasm. Software and hardware skills can be taught easily; if you really want to learn, I'm sure Quent and I would be very happy to teach members who are really interested to use these programs.
Chapter 7 - The Selection Now back to the storyline...Damn.. I sure side track a lot.. Anyway, yea.. So April came by and we had our elections and of course everything mentioned above was applicable. Just a little insight how the elections work; I'm not sure if its' still going to be same, but I believe it will be. We usually let the members vote who they want in Exco, but members have no control over who get what posts. We do this because we want the members to have a say in whom they want to be running the club, but it is simply too hard for the members to make an informed choice on who should run for what post. Trust me, it's fair. The US government does it that way too and so does Singapore.
Chapter 8 - On AlumniAfter rambling on and on for so long, I think I should end off with the Alumni. The Alumni was setup by my batch because after we graduated from school, we still felt a strong affection for the cub; after all, we did build the club with our hands. But we also realize that our time in the club has already been long over and its fate no longer lies with us, but with our dear juniors. We wanted a place where all of us, who have graduated and wanted to return to a place to gather. However, I think the most important reason why the Alumni is around is because we don't want to lose that Photog sprit and the knowledge that we acquired that was painstakingly built up over the years to be lost over time.
As Alumni, I think one of our main priorities is to act as a knowledge pool for the juniors to tap on. Many times, I see new presidents and their Exco making the same exact mistakes as their seniors, learning the same hard way their seniors have learnt. Time in Exco is already so short, lessons learnt in the past should not be made again, but yet again, they are committed by every new batch of Exco. Hence it is one of my personal aims in the Alumni to prevent this cycle from happening by infusing all our knowledge into the next batch of photographers, so that within a short amount of time, they can reach a higher level and work on more advanced stuff and not waste precious time grappling with the basics.
I don't really know how true this is, but general Alumni sentiments feels that our juniors are kinda scared of us. I seriously wonder why. Maybe it's because of me. I think instead of being scared of me, they should be scared of JS and XQn instead (for yet again some unspeakable reasons). Anyway, I just want our juniors to know that the Alumni will always be here for you, even if you make silly mistakes worth warranting a scolding; because to us, you all will always be our beloved juniors, the same way grandparents always never fail to dote on their grandchildren. So whenever you need help, you should know you can always rely on us. We also hope that when you all graduate, you will always remember the days you spent in Photography>MJC with much fun and laughter and hopefully, you will want to make the same change in your junior's lives, the same way we did for you^^.
