Wantagh Camera Club sees world through unique lens

In 1952, on his 16th birthday, Dick Hunt, of Levittown, was given a camera by his aunt. “[It] was a used camera, but still worked just as well,” Hunt recalled.

Hunt, now 85, developed a lifelong passion for photography, and recently celebrated his 31-year-long membership in the Wantagh Camera Club, which he’s served as president a number of times throughout the years.

For over half a century, Hunt and other club members have met regularly to discuss photography and assess one another’s work. The club, one of nearly 20 across Long Island, was established in 1970 and is still going strong 51 years later.

Hunt joined the club in 1990, after retiring from the Western Electric Company. He said it was hard to balance photography with his New York City-based career and raising a family. “I didn’t have enough time to devote to it as I would’ve liked to have,” he said.

Hunt, who specializes in zoo photography, said he prefers shooting in black and white. He has visited the Bronx, Prospect Park, Queens and Staten Island zoos to take photos, and usually stops by one or another of them eight to 10 times a year.

“Zoo photography requires a lot of patience,” he said. “Some people will just go into the zoo and snap a photo of each animal and move on, but I’ll go to the lions to take a photo, and I’ll stay there for three hours waiting for the pose with the right light.”

The Wantagh Camera Club, which has about 18 members, meets once a month at the Wantagh Public Library. Print photos are on display at each meeting, and members critique them. They also meet on Zoom, and go over the digital images that they will enter in competitions.

The club is a member of the Photographic Federation of Long Island, a nonprofit comprising clubs in Nassau and Suffolk counties and New York City. The organization holds monthly interclub competitions from October through May as well as an annual Leonard Victor Competition in June, at which the best photos of the past year are chosen. PFLI also hosts special events, including instructional seminars by leading experts in specialties like digital photography and Adobe Photoshop, as well as live photo shoots.

Most of the members of the Wantagh club are retirees who have time for such a hobby. “Photography takes a lot of time,” Barbara Crane, the club’s president for two years, said. “Getting the photos takes a lot of time, plus when you need to sit down and edit your photos on the computer, [it] takes a lot of time.”

Crane, who got her first camera when she was 7, said she has always loved photography. In high school, she took a class in it and shot photos for the school newspaper. Afterward she attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, where she majored in graphic design and minored in photography.

Though she didn’t do much photography after school, Crane said she was always eager to join a club and learn more about it, especially with the growth of digital photography. She discovered Wantagh the club because it met near her home in Massapequa Park.

Crane is a big fan of landscape and floral photography, and enjoys taking part in local competitions.

Much like Hunt, Marty Silverstein, 80, loves shooting photos of animals at the zoo. He said he can spend half a day just waiting for the perfect shot.

Silverstein, of Woodmere, has been a member of the Wantagh club for about 12 years, and has joined other Long Island camera clubs as well. He watched the group’s meetings transition from in-person to online during the pandemic.

Like many other local groups, the club was forced to go virtual with its meetings after the library shut down. It also held meetings outdoors, in members’ backyards.

Silverstein said that the pandemic wasn’t without its challenges. “Covid really affected the clubs through their meetings and competitions,” he said. “. . . It’s hard to see print images through a computer screen. They’re made to be seen in person, and we haven’t been able to see them properly.”

As the pandemic gradually recedes, the club has resumed in-person meetings at the library, Hunt said. “Going back to the meetings in the library has brought us back on schedule a little bit,” he said. “It’s nice to see people in person again and getting together.”

The camera club is always looking for new members. Those who are interested in joining can contact Barbara Crane at bctraveler1@me.com.