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2020 calendar

DanR

Diamond Level Sponsor
I've said before you have one of the most beautiful Sunbeam Alpine I've ever seen!

Beautiful beyond measure:)

12 shots for 12 months would be fine with me,
 

Paul A

Alpine Registry Curator
Platinum Level Sponsor
Maybe we should drop Alpine from our name. I just think "The Sunbeam Alpine Owners Club of America" calendar should be all Alpines if we have enough Alpine pictures, I don't even care if my car is in it or not.

you have made your point.
 

Series6

Past President
Gold Level Sponsor
Having been on the Board for 6 years I can't tell you how many times we asked for pictures. Just remember-The only pictures used are pictures members send in. If there's enough response of Alpines, great. 12 Alpines.

one last point... Tigers are modified Alpines. So is my V6.
 

65beam

Donation Time
:) Is there a club that covers the U.S. and Canada that is "Dedicated to the preservation, restoration and enjoyment of all Rootes Group vehicles" ?
 

65sunbeam

SAOCA Membership Director
Diamond Level Sponsor
We are fortunate to have several USA based owner's clubs for the various Sunbeam models we all love and enjoy!
You can join up and participate in any or all of them. I belong to 3 different ones myself.
I have seen the 2020 calendars and there are lots of Alpines, a Le Mans, a Humber, a Hillman and a Tiger or two.
Something for everyone and thanks again to all who submitted the photos for this year and thanks to Greggers for making it happen.
And I forgot to mention, no other Rootes car club in the world does an annual calendar that I know of.......
For those who have not yet donated this year-any donations at Gold level and above submitted before December 31 of 2019 will get a 2020 calendar. If you donate on January 1, 2020 or later you will get a 2021 calendar towards the end of 2020!
Thanks to all who have donated and keep our club running on all cylinders.
 

PROCRAFT

Donation Time
Having been on the Board for 6 years I can't tell you how many times we asked for pictures. Just remember-The only pictures used are pictures members send in. If there's enough response of Alpines, great. 12 Alpines.

one last point... Tigers are modified Alpines. So is my V6.
Not true I remember you calling and asking if that was my car on the calendar. What Calendar. I submitted nothing!
 

john.hemsath

Diamond Level Sponsor
I'm surprised to hear not enough pictures of Alpines were received in years past as I've submitted photos of my SV every year since I acquired it but it's never made the pages of the calendar. I've not been told the resolution of the pictures sent was too low, so perhaps that was the reason it keeps hitting the cutting room floor.

I do enjoy looking at the calendar throughout the year and would like to congratulate and thank those involved putting it together.
I look forward to receiving the 2020 version and displaying it in my garage.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all
 

Toyanvil

Gold Level Sponsor
Not true, they have received enough Alpine pictures to fill the Alpine calendar. They just choose not too, I am glad I am not the only one who has noticed. I also have sent pictures every year only to be cut for non-Alpine models. I wish more members would read the home page, if they think I am wrong.
Here is the picture I sent in this year only to be told the calendar was full and it maybe used next year, I was also cut last year with a different picture. Maybe it's just not a good picture for the calendar.
RIMG1186-XL.jpg
 

Alpine 1789

SAOCA President
Diamond Level Sponsor
The comments are received and noted. How about we let the criticisms go for now? A great deal of work goes into creation and distribution of the calendar, all of it by members who have volunteered their time to the club. I also notice that not one person has stepped up to volunteer to serve on our Board in 2020, which means that we will be relying on the same group of dedicated volunteers to put the 2021 calendar together. (More on that later.)

I, for one, am looking forward to receiving my new calendar and hanging it up in my shop. And, will do all I can to help make the 2021 calendar even better.
 

65sunbeam

SAOCA Membership Director
Diamond Level Sponsor
"I just upped my membership level to get the new calendar"
Thanks for that! Everyone else has until December 31 to become Gold or above and this great 2020 calendar will be mailed to you too.
 

RootesRooter

Donation Time
I just re-upped, too. Looking forward to the calendar and SAOC access. Thanks for your time and energy in making it happen every year.
 

Greggers

SAOCA Vice President
Platinum Level Sponsor
For funsies, I decided to look back at the previous four or five years I've been in charge of putting together the calendars and posters. We received an average of 20 photos. (That average was thrown off by the year we got 40 photos (more on why that doesn't matter later)). Of those 20, roughly half are typically too low res to be usable. At a time or two, I've reached out for larger versions, and often I either receive smaller versions, or I'm simply told "This is the only version of the photo I have." On average, one photo was taken a long time ago, and it shows. And usually, one is a professional photo. We can't use those. If your photo says, "Blah Blah Photography" and your name isn't Blah Blah, your photo will not be used (and if your name is Blah Blah, please resubmit the photo without the watermark). Sorry, but we simply can't risk getting sued. A lawsuit would end the club. Period.

So after that, by mid-November each year, I end up with seven or eight viable photos. We need 15. Twelve for the months, one for the cover, and two for the platinum and diamond donors certificates. Of those seven or eight, an average of two are vertically oriented. Vertically oriented photos don't work for the calendar, because it's a horizontal thing. Theoretically, one could use multiple vertical shots to create a single horizontal calendar page. But, and I admit this is a personal failing, I simply don't care for calendar collages. If you want a collaged calendar, I encourage you to volunteer to design the calendar every year.

Of the five or six remaining photos, one or two isn't an Alpine. We can debate all day long about whether non-Alpine Rootes vehicles belong in the calendar of a club called "The Sunbeam Alpine Owners Association of America," but most years, we're scrambling for any photos we can get, so I don't discriminate. Well, that's not entirely true. I discriminate against photos with people in them. No offense, you're pretty, but that's not the kind of calendar we're putting together (and I don't want to have to get into model releases and all that). I think of the calendar as a holistic story. Perhaps that's another one of my personal failings, and it's mostly due to the fact that while you consume the calendar one month at a time, as I craft it into the wee hours after working my day job through 12 hour days, I live with it as a whole for a couple of weeks. So it's weird to me to have one photo with people among 11 other photos without.

All of those five or six photos need some level of retouching. Sometimes it's removing oil spots from the driveway (again, my personal preference is not to be reminded that these things often leak like a sieve). Sometimes it's changing the color tone so that the image will look good when printed. Sometimes, I have to remove or recreate parts of the image (see if you can spot the five photos this year that didn't have enough trees, roads, sky, rocks, etc. And see if you can spot the one that used to have a "no littering" sign right in the middle of the photo).

If your photo hasn't been chosen, first check to see if it's too small. Typically a minimum of 1mb is viable. Sometimes higher. Sometimes, and this is a rare sometimes, a photo of smaller byte size can work if there's enough photo there. The calendar photos need to be 11 x 8.5 plus some bleed, preferably at at least 150 dpi. Everything that comes out of your phone comes out at 72 dpi. So, if you do the math, the photo needs to be at least 22 x 17. Sure, these days, most phones put out that physical size or higher. But there are vagaries in all that. For example, one photo was only 256k, but magically it was like 40 inches wide at 72 dpi. So I was able to adjust the physical size down while maintaining the byte size, and the result was a viable photo that was tiny but large. That doesn't always work. The longer I have to work with it to make a photo to make it work, the more it better be a fantastic photo.

And second, if your photo doesn't end up in the calendar, check to see if it's vertically oriented. They don't work. Theoretically, I could crop a vertical photo to make it work in the horizontal calendar. However, if it's too low-res a photo already, it'll be way too low once it's cropped. At the risk of overcomplicating the discussion, say you've got an 8.5 x 11 photo, when it's cropped to 8.5 x 6, it's now not only not the right orientation for the calendar, which needs to be 11 x 8.5. but it's also simply too small. So it needs to be size-adjusted 30% larger in each direction. Take a small photo that's been cropped and adjust its size up and it becomes a muddy mess.

Third, if your photo doesn't end up in the calendar, check to see whether or not it's been used in the past several years. If I get 16 photos and one of them was featured in last year's calendar, guess which one gets the call this year. Now, if you're a gold-level member, you don't get to see the certificates. It may very well be possible that your photo has been used in a certificate.

And fourth, if your photo doesn't end up in the calendar, ask yourself if you submitted it before. Doing this isn't easy. And I'll apologize before I say this. Sorry. If you send the same image two or three years in a row, I may think we've already used it. In one case, I keep getting the same photo that was in the 2017 calendar. Should I use the exact same photo again?

Gun to my head, I'd speculate that these days, 50% of Alpines are red and 20% are white (a completely unscientific guess based on what I see in the photos and at the various car shows). And as beautiful as your car may be, you could put five different Alpines on the same background, and you'd be hard pressed to pick yours out of a lineup. So the photo setting itself is what makes it. Is your photo setting boring or interesting? Is it simple or is it distracting? Is it fun, funny, exciting, cool? Is it clean or does it have something in it that makes it illegal or inappropriate? Does the average member want to look at your neighbor's ugly Dodge Caravan in the background? Will the require a great deal of retouching or cropping? These are the questions I have to ask myself when I fire up Photoshop and InDesign.

After some 40-50 hours of scrounging, begging, retouching, stretching, fretting, deciding, designing, and various other machinations of putting together a calendar (then putting $1,200 worth on my personal credit card), if there magically happen to be leftover photos, those photos get moved into next year's folder. I'm excited to say that the 2021 folder is the fullest I've ever seen at this point. And I'd be more than happy to share that folder with whoever wants to design the calendar and certificates next year.
 

DanR

Diamond Level Sponsor
I wish to thank you very much for what you go thru to make our Club the Best in my view!

This is the first time I clearly understand "some" of what it takes to do the calendar.

You are a credit to the SAOCA... Bless you and your wife for devoting your time and talents for us,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Looking forward to displaying the 2020 Calendar.
 

Toyanvil

Gold Level Sponsor
I second that. This is AWESOME info that we all can use and Thank you again for all the hard work you put into it.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
 
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Alpine 1789

SAOCA President
Diamond Level Sponsor
WOW! I confess that had no idea how much was involved. I knew it took effort on your part - hence my note above - but assumed that effort was sorting through the photos, re-sizing as necessary and then pasting them into a stock format. You already had my gratitude for all you do for us; that just went up through the roof!
 

john.hemsath

Diamond Level Sponsor
I have to echo everyone's comments Gregger, thank you for the explanation of what's involved putting together the calendar.
More importantly, that you for all your efforts doing so.
I understand much better why my submissions were inferior to what's needed as I've always used my smart phone (my only camera) to take the shots I've submitted.
Guess it's time to ask around to see if someone will loan me their digital camera for a future submission.

Happy New Year to all
 
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