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Wilmington’s Barbara Hoenig is a new
member this year. She says she heard of the
club through a friend at work. “I’m excited.
I’m finally getting a digital SLR for my
birthday, and I want to learn how to get the
most out of my new camera,” Hoenig says.
Early Beginnings Behind the
thriving club that exists today are two
members who had a vision early on for
how a camera club might enrich others’
lives. Founding and current member R.J.
Thompson says he was taking some photography
classes at Cape Fear Community
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
College in the 1980s and had a desire to
bring together people who enjoyed photography.
“My professor, Mark Miller,
encouraged me to go ahead and try to get
a camera club started, and that was how it
all began,” Thompson says.
In the summer of 1987, Thompson put
out flyers to see if anyone was interested
in forming a club. The first organizational
meeting took place July 8, at Cape Fear
Community College, with about 15 people
attending. Two weeks later, another meeting
was held to form a board and draw up
bylaws. “There actually was another camera
club in the area before us,” Thompson says,
“but it only lasted about
a year. Bob Runyan, who
was a member of that
club, helped us with the
bylaws.”
The first official meeting
of the Cape Fear
Camera Club took
place the third week
of September 1987, at
Cape Fear Community
College. By the end of
the first year, there were
between 25 and 30 members,
including Wayne
Upchurch, who was a
Star News photographer.
The first president was
I.M. Blaustien, who served
for six months, followed by
Thompson, who served during the club’s
second six months.
Thompson remembers the club’s first
field trip. “Cape Fear Camera Club members
were invited aboard the Henrietta I to
take photos of its inaugural cruise, on
April 2, 1988. “We all took pictures and
later presented the owner with a scrapbook
of the images,” Thompson says.
Another founding member, Robert
Neale, was teaching chemistry and photography
at the University of North Carolina
Wilmington when the club formed.
Because of his relationship with the university,
the club moved its meeting place to
UNCW and continued to meet there until
2010, when it moved back to Cape Fear
Community College.
Neale served as president of the club
from 1988-1990, and again in 1999 and
2003. He also oversaw the club’s photography
library, which he kept on a cart
in his office and wheeled to meetings.
“Eventually, it became too difficult to
maintain the library,” Neale says, “and
we donated all the books to the Randall
Library.”
“One of the interesting activities of our
early years as a club was a sort of pen pal
relationship with a photography club in
England,” Neale says. “We used to trade
prints for some contests, and some of their
members even came over to visit us, and
some of our members went there.”
The club continued to grow during the
years — it has as large a membership today
as it had in the early 1990s — then tapered
off in the mid 1990s. Neale speculates that
this membership decline coincided with a
Clockwise from top: Cape Wetlands by Jim Maresca, Tug in
Fog by Skip Pudney, I See You by Vikki Pedersen, Looking
Ahead by John Wilson, Water Lilly by Ted Zimmerman.