The general idea behind starting the Vankleek Hill Amateur Photographers Club was pretty simple… find other photographers in my home village, charge them outrageous membership fees, then take that money, move to Rockland and spend it all on cocaine, hookers and a Netflix membership — because that’s how they roll in Rockland.

But that didn’t work out.

So, instead, I figured, f*ck it, I’ll find those people willing to donate their time and photos and I’ll upload those photos to a Facebook page dedicated to the people and stuff around Vankleek Hill, then publish those photos here on my — now our — blog.

And because this blog already has such a bizarrely high Google Page Rank [Google it], having Club photos published here means they’ll be easily found by people searching for ‘Vankleek Hill’ related material, or by people — family, friends — searching for individual Club members… which is kind of cool.

We’ve been uploading our photos fairly regularly to our Facebook page — we also post camera reviews, material regarding photography laws, local camera and material sales… you know, photo stuff. And we also try to get local professional photographers to share their techniques with us.

But this is our first official blog post as a Club. This week features Melanie Cadieux, Jennifer Gibbs, Andrew (my 7-year old son), Diane Lingley (my wife), James Southgate and at least one other person who’s not sure if she should have her name mentioned on a public blog.

If you want to participate, just ‘Like’ our Facebook page, and leave us an email address so we can send you the two or three instructions that’ll get you started. Right now we’re not sure what benefits there will be to becoming a member, but some ideas are to have a 2014-15 calendar, or post cards, ready for sale next spring. Or to take part, as a group, in an art exhibition here in town.

Or a bunch of us will just end up in a motel room in Rockland watching Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Cop Rock (which was a real thing) on Netflix.

Photo by Melanie Cadieux

Photo by Melanie Cadieux

Photo by Diane Lingley

Photo by Gabriel Landriault

Photo by Andrew Laviolette

Photo by Andrew Laviolette

Photo by Andrew Laviolette