President's "State of the Union"

President’s Message

Hello, friends! I was introduced as PPO President during our convention last week but since we had a pretty low member turn-out, I thought I would reach out to you digitally! I own Pouka Art & Photography in Grove City, Ohio and I joined PPO in 2017 and became a board member in 2019. I became the Image Comp Chair and was voted in as Board Secretary in 2020.

As many of you are aware, President David Beckham had a stroke earlier this year. I have served as president pro-tempore for the past six months, carrying on David’s vision of fellowship and learning for the organization. I look forward to continuing to serve our community of photographers, in Ohio and elsewhere!

If you’d like updates on how David is doing, information can be found on caringbridge.org.

We lost two board members last year due to personal and business commitments so our board is down to five members and all of us have been here for at least two terms. We would love to have some new ideas and a fresh perspective so if you’re a PPO member and would like to get involved, I’d love to hear from you!

If a board commitment seems a bit scary, dip your toes into one of our committees! We desperately need someone to help welcome new members and provide some thoughts about improving member benefits and experiences. If that sounds interesting, send us an email! How about marketing? Social Media? Graphics? Videos? Crafting emails? Join our communications and marketing team! Just drop us a line at staff@ppofohio.org!

I won’t get into specific financial information in this format but you are always welcome to reach out to us for details. Suffice to say that our events such as Mansfield Mayhem, Mohican Madness, and membership fees pay for our speakers and venue costs at our annual convention, renamed this year to “Summer School” (we’ll go a little crazier with that theme next year!). Due to some good luck, generous sponsors, and reasonable speakers, our loss this year was less than expected and we plan to move some more money into savings. Our annual image competition continues to be a break-even event but hopefully provides our entrants with valuable feedback.

This year we are adding a new fun event at The Wilds near Zanesville on September 23rd. If interest is strong, we will add it to our annual roster! If you’ve ever wanted to go on safari to photograph exotic animals but weren’t keen on travelling far, this event is for you! Long-time PPO member Tom Walsh has agreed to host – we’ll have a morning of learning tips and tricks, a buffet lunch, then a photo shoot from an open-air bus, followed by an informative class on editing the images you just took! This will be a PPA merited class. You can find more information here: https://www.ppofohio.org/upcoming-events/2024/2/14/thewilds

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got a moment and I hope to see everyone at one (or more!) of our events in the upcoming year!

Thank you for your continued support of the Professional Photographers of Ohio!

Danica Barreau
President