Cohoes photographer plans club

Meeting set for Monday at library to discuss creation

COHOES, N.Y. >> After getting several requests over the past few years about starting a photography club, the owner of Junkyard Watchdog Arts in the Spindle City is ready to kick- off the club with an organizational meeting.

By popular request, on April 10 at 6 p.m., local photographer Dave Koschnick — owner of the small business Junkyard Watchdog Arts — will hold a meeting at the Cohoes Public Library to discuss the creation of the photography club.

“I’ve done a couple presentations at the library with travel photography from trips I’ve taken, and I’ve had people ask me about when am I going to do a photography club at the library,” explained Koschnick, who also co- chairs the committee Choose Cohoes for Art.

Koschnick said he first wanted to host an organizational meeting so he could see what those who are interested in the club wish to learn more about when it comes to photog- raphy.

“The reason for the organizational meeting is because when you say photography club it could be a gazillion different things that people are looking to get out of it,” said Koschnick. “Before I commit to actually forming and running the club, I want to get an idea of what people are actually looking for.”

The local photographer, who has been running his photography business out of his home since his retirement, said that he envisions interested club members wanting to find ways to improve their photography skills.

“From the people that have talked to me, I think they are looking for a way to improve their own photography and to learn more,” said Koschnick. “I suspect we’re going to go down the road of having guest speakers that are going to talk about how to do this or that.”

Koschnick who has many years of personal experience in photography, said that he also has another possible idea to do for the photography club if members have interest in doing something like photography contests.

“Some of the other photographic organizations that I belong to have regular monthly photo challenges and I’m going to propose that to the people that are there,” said Koschnick. “If you want to improve you have to practice and you have to be challenged in some way to

do better, so the idea of having monthly challenges that are critiqued and you have a monthly winner, I doubt there will be any prizes or anything at this point for it but I think there’s a good possibility that the library would give us space to post photography on their walls.”

Koschnick continued on to explain further about what he expects future

meetings could be set up like.

“I foresee down the road the idea that we have a club that meets monthly and the main activity of the club is to have a short presentation by some kind of guest or critiquing of art that people bring in,” said Koschnick. “Any kind of training that we would do I think would be scheduled independently of it.”

For updates about the photography club, visit the Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/JunklyardWatchdogArts.