A new exhibit at the Volume One Gallery features works by Chippewa Valley Photo Club members, including “Stone’s Throw” by Lloyd Fleig (above) and “Violin Sonata” by Claude Schilling (below).

When I was a kid we used to call them “the camera people,” folks who hung around in the oddest places through the oddest weather, dripping with gear and taking pictures of the oddest things. I did not like photos at the time. As an upstanding and forcefully normal man, my grandfather was the most methodical and conscientious of not-odd photographers, forcing the family to stand in a well-balanced but utterly inhuman group pose, smiling like stuffed gibbons as he carefully bracketed the exposures into excruciating infinity. At 14 I got a hold of one of his cast-off cameras; it was a German-made machine, stainless steel, and so stiff that the controls cut into my fingers. But I still remember the glorious metallic snick-snack of that shutter opening and closing. I loved that sound, and for my brash adolescent statement I started making that fantastic sound at odd things like windowsills, then roadsides, then trash, then dead grass. And slowly I became one of the camera people, hanging around in muddy places turning odd corners of the mundane world into jewels.

Eau Claire has its own share of camera people. I met with two of them, Lloyd Fleig and Claude Schilling, founders of the Chippewa Valley Photo Club. Both men are photographers, and I asked them how long they had each been doing it. Fleig looked up at the ceiling and said slowly, “Oh, about 60 years.” Schilling looked me dead in the eye and said, “I sold my first print to my sixth grade class. You do that math.” Even if you count my photographic beginning point as the wobbly photo I took of the militia at Williamsburg when I was three years old using my folks’ grey -and-brown plastic Instamatic (I still maintain it would have been a masterful image if the Minutemen hadn’t just shot off their muskets and made me jump), no math gets me close to the years of experience these two hold. They started the Chippewa Valley Photo Club four years ago out of a shared goal to improve their own and other interested peoples’ photography through an open club with a carefully thought-out structure. Schilling stopped his explanation to pop in with, “There’s Lloyd’s famous phrase, ‘This club should be fun!’, and it really is.” The club consists of about 50 members varying in skill from beginners to professionals who meet once a month to learn from each other. Through teaching sessions, talking about each others’ images, group photo shoots, exhibition opportunities, tiered contests with fun awards, and an open-arms philosophy to all skill levels, Fleig and Schilling hope that all members, including themselves, end each year as better photographers than they started.

The club offers many opportunities for members to show their prints. Members are showing often all around town, at the airport, the courthouse, coffee shops, businesses, and galleries. They have an exhibition coming up at the Volume One Gallery that will feature the work of 10 members, showing landscapes, macro images, architectural studies, and HDR prints. Schilling says, “We draw the line with nudes,” quickly throwing up his hands, ”not that there’s anything wrong with that! It’s just not what we do.”

The show opens Friday, March 7, and runs through April. But keep your eyes peeled as you go about your daily business. The Photo Club has pictures up all over, and through them you might possibly get a clear view of the scintillating vision that keeps the camera people endlessly snapping.

Opening Reception: The Chippewa Valley Photo Club Gallery Show • 6:30-8:30pm, Friday, March 7 • Volume One Gallery, 205 N. Dewey St. • FREE • (715) 552-0457 • learn more about the club at chippewavalleyphotoclub.net