Ohio Valley Board Met to Plan Out 2026

Chapter board members Teri Campbell (president), Jim Talkington (membership chair), Emily Orsini (communications chair), Will Jones (grants chair), Hal Barkan (incoming membership chair), Stephen Takacs (education chair), and Ben Ko (programming chair), national board member Matt Reese, and guest Krys O’Bryan met February 21, 2026 at SOW Plated in Columbus Ohio for 4 hours to discuss what issues were most important to the chapter this year and how that should impact our event programming and member recruitment.

Key decisions included:

Cincinnati will pilot a new event format: Brews & Banter. Per Teri, “Brews & Banter is ASMP Ohio Valley’s monthly roundtable where professional imaging professionals connect, share knowledge, and support one another in navigating the evolving business of image-making.” It will occur each month, alternating between a coffee shop and a bar to cater to different tastes, and will alternate between morning meeting times and early evening meeting times. For Cincinnati, Brews & Banter will replace the Pints & Pixels image sharing event. Image sharing events for Cincinnati will shift to a once-a-year event. Columbus will see how Brews and Banter goes in Cincinnati, then evaluate whether it has the resources to produce something similar. Other chapters have seen success with this format so we are eager to try it out.

Columbus will produce more of its business-oriented events online, or at least as hybrid events, to support a membership that is widely dispersed across three states.

The board will conduct an outreach campaign to Indiana and Kentucky members, who have not had an active local representative producing local events to see if any wants to get involved in leading that effort, or at least in participating more with the online events.

The education and grants committee will continue to conduct more outreach to student photographers and early career photographers.

The board also reviewed statistics on membership and events

We are eagerly looking to take the decisions made from the planning meeting and plan out the events for the year. Stay tuned!