Greetings
Everyone,
Fall is in the Air!! And with that brings in the 2023-2024 season of the North
Central Camera Club Council.
Both the fall convention and the spring conventions are back up and running, and
if you have never been, there is never a better time to pack up the car, dust
off the lens, and venture out for a few days of award-winning photography and
most important of all, Friendship. I value my friendships I have made over the
years at N4C and consider many of them lifetime friends, that only see each
other on “Holiday”. Even if you are too late for Dubuque consider the spring
mini or next year at Sioux City. There is no better way to grow as a
photographer and a club than to network with like-minded folks who see and do
the same things.
At my first convention I was terrified about what it would be like, I didn’t
know anyone really. That first year I met several folks who are now amazing
friends, and I eventually talked our club in to hosting our own convention for
the 60th Anniversary of N4C in Fargo.
So, do you have what it takes? Are you the next face of N4C, is you club willing
to step up? I challenge everyone to take 5 minutes are their next club meeting,
make sure you have met all the new faces in the room, and ask each other, what
can I do to help, want to grab coffee, want to carpool to convention, want to go
photograph this cool widget gathering I heard about. Let’s make 2023-24 the year
of Friendship and growing.
I look forward to serving as the President of N4C, even though I am usually
busier than a one-armed paperhanger I’m always available for a chat via text,
email, phone, ham radio, Facebook, smoke signals, or even mail. I am also always
willing to help or teach. I have put on more classes and seminars and mini
sessions that I can count. I may not be the best photographer in the room or
have “all” the latest greatest equipment, but I will always find a new way to
use it. What will you do next?
Paul Hagen
N4C President 2023-2024
Fargo-Moorhead Camera Club

History
The "NORTH CENTRAL CAMERA CLUB COUNCIL” had
its inception almost simultaneously in the minds of three men Robert H.
Cochran, M.D., APSA. Omaha, E, Curtis Lugg, Sioux Falls, and Francis A.
Kingsbury, Ponca and Sioux City.
Fate decided that their paths should cross in the Spring of 1955, these three
men sat on the front porch of the Kingsbury home in Ponca Nebraska where their
vision gave birth to the North Central Council of Camera Clubs. From their idea
that evening a tentative organization, created May 30, 1955, combined members of
seven Camera Clubs located in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota. and South Dakota.
Summer, Fall, and Winter Seasons were spent in organizational creation of many
of the services still available from the "N-4-C", as the infant was nicknamed.
Meeting at the Joslyn Memorial Art Museum in Omaha, January 22, 1956, resulted
in adopting a Constitution, and in electing the temporary officers to their
permanent positions.
The First Convention, held in Sioux City, lowa, with Francis A. Kingsbury as
General Chairman gave the 123 delegates from the 20 member Clubs such excellent
programs that it is difficult to uphold tradition in the subsequent Conventions,
The now famous "N 4 C, “Where Names become Faces and Faces become Friends" was
originated during this gathering by Francis Kingsbury. The original officers
were re-elected to complete their assignment to build an active and lasting N-4
C.