Gear and association info

[liviu.dnistran]

Hi all,
I know it's been a while since I posted anything .
I'll post some pics from my last outing at the 71st Air Base soon .

I am vicepresident of a spotting association we formed in Cluj (Transilvania Spotters). We thought to follow your lead and get a legal status for our hobby.
I noticed some of the members here use Nikon gear (very expensive Nikon gear to be exact ) with lots of NPS logos on it. I was wondering if you are doing professional work besides the airplane pictures.
Most of us think twice or maybe three time on spending 8000 euros on a 500mm or 600mm lens, if we even have the money in the first place . We don't have any quality rental shops here so that is out of the question. Do you have photo rental shops in Poland that can provide special lenses needed for airplane photography?

I would be very interested to find out more about the way your association works so that we can apply some or all of your principles to our associacion.
I've tried google translate on the website, but it's not very helpful and neither on the forum .

If you believe this post is out of order, move it to another place or simply remove it. We can continue via PM if you believe this should not be public.

Thanks,
Liviu

[Tomaszek]

Hi!

Some of us are doing proffessional work, but I think that for the majority of members is just a hobby. Believe me: we are thinking four times before we spend a lot of money to Nikkor 500 or 600 I think about it since 2010 In fact there is not so much people who can afford that. Most of us using less expensive lenses.

In Poland we have only Sigma rental shop. There is no rental shops with proffesional Nikon lenses besides NPS. Of course there is Larky - one of our member, he is also the owner of rental shop, but lets be honest. He is an amateur. Hi Larky!

Sinse i'm just a member i will not explain how our association works in details. I think that someone from the board will do that better than me. But you may be sure: our most important rule is to have a lot of fun from this

Best regards

[larky]

Jog on Tomaszku

[Tomaszek]

[hesja]

We thought to follow your lead and get a legal status for our hobby.

That's really great news! It's very nice

I would be very interested to find out more about the way your association works so that we can apply some or all of your principles to our associacion.

I do not know what You exactly mean. There is a lot of matters concerning association
How to handle with money, with people, with pictures, with other organizations

There are a lot of threads. Please ask a specific question and we'll try to answer

[liviu.dnistran]

I should tell you from the start that our association has only 5 members that are also the board members.
We are aware of the issue with the people and we are trying to handle that based on the previous experience. We had other attempts of creating the association and that's when we learned alot about people .

We would like to start formal relations with the airports, the military and other organisations that are interested in this type of activity.
Do you have some partnerships with Nikon or Canon? Maybe they are letting you use some of their more expensive gear in exchange for exposure for their products?
How have you managed to estabilish such a good relationship with the military? I've seen that you've done photo shoots with the Iskras from quite some special angles .
Do you still have issues around airpots/military bases when it comes to photography?

I think this is where we would like to start. Maybe in time we'll get to the money part, or any other issue.

Thanks again.

P.S. We've got a website started which is quite the work in progress (transilvania-spotters.ro).
I don't know if you were aware of the Photoavia.net website, but we are now working on getting that back online.

[hesja]

5 people is a very good amount. Create a brand and do not go on a number of people.
 
Our relationship with the military and airports have only one foundation. It's a very good photography! The main thing is to do your job as well as you can. Making the best pictures! Sooner or later someone will see you and will want to have that pictures taken at his home. He will invite you. You will make him photographic material. If he will be pleased, he will recommend you to others. That's how it works with us.

We cooperate with the NPS. They sometimes lend us equipment but very rarely.

[liviu.dnistran]

Thanks for the reply.
We are trying to take more interesting picures, learning from you , and prooving that we are better that the rest. We don't have expensive gear so this makes it even more challenging.
I am aware that lots of people try to gain advantages through an association like this, but my main goal is to go in there and take the best pictures I can take. Even though this is just a hobby for me, when I go to air-bases I am focused on taking pictures.
I believe this is the best way to get yourself noticed, in a good way .

P.S. I might ask some photo technique questions or editing questions that may have been already answered somewhere in the forum. I don't speak polish so I would like to ask you to bear with me .