TPC 152 - International Meet Issue

Patrick J. Martin

PCS Life Member/Illini Chapter President
I can't believe I'm actually the first one to post a thread like this, since it seems I'm in the middle of the club's mailing list and I'm always beaten to it. Nonetheless, as the host for the 2013 International Meet, I'm very pleased to be the one to start the thread for thanking and acknowledging the work performed by our publications committee for providing the club with yet another fine issue covering the 2013 International Meet.

Specifically, my thanks to Walt McCall and Brady Smith for creating the magazine, Steve Loftin and Steve Lichtman for their photography talents, and most definitely Gregg Merksamer for both his literary and photographic coverage of events. You gentlemen have made me proud :)

Finally, as I said several times to different people while in Milwaukee, I could have organized the best meet in the world, but it wouldn't have been anything if no one had shown up. So I continue to remain grateful for the participation of everyone who attended the 2013 International Meet!
 
I am also surprised, as I usually see everyone posting that they got their TPC, way before I get mine. But, mine came yesterday and another beautiful edition it is!
 
Apparently, the USPS has gotten better (or, perhaps, worse) and we are all getting our magazines about the same time. Looks great!

...Specifically, my thanks to Walt McCall and Brady Smith for creating the magazine, Steve Loftin and Steve Lichtman for their photography talents, and most definitely Gregg Merksamer for both his literary and photographic coverage of events. You gentlemen have made me proud :)...
You're welcome. I'm glad to take the photos, but the cars are the stars. With the help of a few tricks that Steve Loftin once taught me (and a little I learned in a junior high photography class about time exposures that I finally used for the cover shot), mostly I just point the camera at the car and press the button. And mail the CD to Walt.
 
I got mine wed. but since I don't post anymore I didn't say anything. wish I could have come to the party but wife was sick. great magazine. we are lucky to get it at this price.
 
were it was not the same as begin there it was nice to catch up this way with friends we missed.

Agreed. Though I would have much rather been able to attend the meet, getting to read the meet issue of the magazine was good. Thanks to everyone that did such a great job on it.
 
FYI 'The Friends Of The Professional Car Society' paid $5,000.00 toward this issue.

Just for one issue? yea I would say WOW :eek:

I'm assuming the majority of cost is in the printing and mailing and if so what a shame to spend so much unnecessary money in this digital age where a PDF or digital book seems much more cost efficient.

Just think how many pro cars could be pulled out of salvage yards and saved for that kind of money?:confused:
 
James, membership has its priveledges. If we put the magazine out electronically or digitally, it could be passed around free of charge to anyone. This way, only paying members get the benefit. Being a non member and non website supporter, you dont get to criticize our business practices.
 
James, membership has its priveledges. If we put the magazine out electronically or digitally, it could be passed around free of charge to anyone. This way, only paying members get the benefit. Being a non member and non website supporter, you dont get to criticize our business practices.

Didn't mean to criticize as much as I was just making an observation and responding to a post.
 
James, membership has its priveledges. If we put the magazine out electronically or digitally, it could be passed around free of charge to anyone. This way, only paying members get the benefit. Being a non member and non website supporter, you dont get to criticize our business practices.

Good point. Besides, some of us like the printed copy. I would not want it any other way, and as much as I love this club (been a proud member for over 20 years), if it comes to the point of not having a printed copy I would drop my membership.
 
I cant remember what day I got it without looking, but it was the day before I made the thread on the members to director forum about a change to the judging system.
Every time a new issue comes out, it gets better, and thicker. Great job!
 
Just for one issue? yea I would say WOW :eek:

I'm assuming the majority of cost is in the printing and mailing and if so what a shame to spend so much unnecessary money in this digital age where a PDF or digital book seems much more cost efficient.

Just think how many pro cars could be pulled out of salvage yards and saved for that kind of money?:confused:

there has been some talk of that but believe it or not there are not a lot of us old guys that like to do things this way. nothing more relaxing then the easy chair a cup of coffee and the new issue. then there is the Problem of our managing editor. he has stated point blank that if we ever vote for a digital format he will quit on the spot. none of us want to do that much work. I get both copy's of the CLC electric and paper. I have only opened the electric one once. I'll wait for paper thank you. besides 20 years from now when the kids clean me out how will they find all those old magazines if they are lost in cyberspace. 5,000 a run might go a long way to buying cars but we don't have a club junk yard or housing to put them. this way we get sent a 100 or more each issue. to the house. then again who am I to break the rice bowl of my letter carrier:D
 
Heartily agree with Ed Renstrom about the old school joys of curling up with a thick, glossy paper magazine in spite of all the PCS achieves on-line. It's always gratifying to see a finished International Meet issue received so warmly by the readership, even though it's rarely detailed here or elsewhere exactly how much how much work goes into distilling all the imagery and other raw material that ultimately winds up on the printed page. While I don't know how many photos Steve Lichtman, Steve Loftin and other issue contributors took themselves, the simple fact this year's meet was two days longer than average (counting Tuesday's "Early Bird" tours and the Sunday invitation exhibit at the Milwaukee Masterpiece Concours) found me heading home with more than FOUR THOUSAND high-res digital photos that needed to be sorted into individual entrant and/or daily tour folders. Just in case something went awry with my cameras or memory cards, or I experienced a break-in or a meteor strike on the two-day drive home, I made sure Walt & Brady got flash drives containing my Tuesday-Saturday shots by the time they left Milwaukee midday Sunday; to get the file transfers done, I had to stay up until 2 or 2:30 in the morning at least two nights that week! As I had no trouble filling it, I was truly-grateful for the three months Walt allotted me to weed out my favorite images (gotten down, against all odds, to several dozen daily semi-finalists); retitle these JPEGs to summarize the subject matter for captioning; and make basic enhancements like cropping, shadow balancing and horizon leveling, after which Brady was snail-mailed finalized sets of flash drives and photo CDs.

Transcribing what was ultimately a two-and-half-inch thick stack of daily tour & entrant notes - the essential prelude to the coherent, reasonably-concise "Cream City Chronicle" you wound up reading in TPC - was, of course, an epic project in itself, entailing multiple spell checks of every single place and car owner name plus the incorporation of background material from numerous guidebooks and websites concerning the attractions we visited. As a result, it took me an average of two to three days to transcribe each day's worth of notes! Though my hand-written notes used to go in the recycling bin once their content material was distilled into a single Microsoft Word file, I decided to mail this year's original Milwaukee notebooks to Brady so he could put them in the PCS archives, as future generations of members might be intrigued to see what the departure point for International Meet issue of TPC looks like. Is it overkill? Arguably yes, but it does give the folks who missed Milwaukee a fully-detailed sense of what it was like to be there, and remind the people that made it exactly why Such A Good Time Was Had By All. Hopefully, it's also potent incentive for people who have never attended a PCS International to join us in Rochester this August, Houston in 2015 or Gettysburg in 2016.
 
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