The Joiner is a newcomer to Boston and a compulsive joiner of clubs and organizations. He shares his experience joining Boston area groups weekly at Bostonist.

Pedestrians trying to navigate the Atlantic Avenue sidewalk on the Boston Waterfront at 7:30 Sunday morning had more to contend with than the usual pointing and clicking tourists. They also had to bypass the mound of tripods and camera bags piled outside Dunkin' Donuts, where members of the Boston Camera Club (BCC) were taking a break from their early morning field trip.

Six or seven members milled outside the donut shop, discussing what had happened in the hour and a half since the field trip began, at 6:00am, at South Boston's Federal Courthouse. The wind had been brisk and chilly, and the rising sun, ordinarily ideal against downtown when seen from the Courthouse, had been obscured by clouds. To make matters worse, security at the Boston Harbor Hotel had kicked them off the property, and nobody was sure whether the Hotel possessed the legal authority to do so.

"It's better than shooting in New York," one member said, "where every single thing needs a thousand-dollar permit."

Founded in 1881, the Boston Camera Club claims to be the second oldest amateur camera club in the nation. It has a strong sense of its own history. While nobody has the complete story on its founding -- the oldest member, ninety-eight, has been around since 1938 -- the BCC maintains an extensive archive of its exhibitions and international salons that tell the story.

Henry Weissenberger never tires of telling his own stories. His involvement in the Club stretches back fifty-three years and across two marriages. (He was widowed.) He met his first wife through the club and later convinced his second to join. He has long gray hair, an enormous, bushy beard, and an inexhaustible desire to talk about photography. His long amateur participation has given him an expansive idea of the discipline. He takes pictures of "anything that catches his eye and is legitimate." What theme, exactly, would be illegitimate?

"Pornography. Some nudes are considered fine art, but very few," Weissenberger cautioned.

Post contributed by Rick Sawyer. More about the Boston Camera Club after the jump!

On the Waterfront, nobody was taking illegitimate photographs. The group had made its way from the donut shop to Long Wharf. It is impossible to say how many club members were present at any one time. People were constantly joining, abandoning and rejoining the group, giving anybody trying to keep track the vertigo of following a swarm in search of nectar, or, in this case, a great shot.

"Did you see that flower box up there?" Bob Glassman, a member of the executive committee asked David Finks, a BCC member of only two years. Glassman pointed toward the roof of the Custom House Block, where he had been shooting a number of photographs. Finks looked up, snapped a quick picture, and moved on.

Glassman likes to talk about helping other people take better photographs. "We have enough know-how in this club to answer just about any question," he says. Members range from newbies shooting with a point-and-click to seasoned photographers like Argie Staples, a photocollage artist whose work, in Glassman's words, "looks like a tapestry."

The artistic side is something the Club is working on. That and getting younger members. Club President Mark Staples (Argie's husband) admits, "We have a lot of engineers. Especially retired engineers."

If Tuesday night's Latimer Print Competition was any indication, however, the club is meeting its objective. A younger, artsier Club member, David Finks won second place in the Color, Group B category for a pair of brilliantly colored portraits taken at August's Cambridge Carnival. Finks joined the Club partly because he likes competing among a group of likeminded people.

"These guys are hardcore," he said, indicating the membership, who judge each competition and offer detailed criticisms of entries. "It keeps me on my toes."

More directly didactic than the field trips or the print competitions, the Club offers classes on digital photography, along with three monthly photo studios, where professional lighting equipment and backdrops are available for use. Once a month a (legitimate) photographic model poses for the group. It is a measure of the Club's love for competition that they also have an annual model pageant, a throwback.

Also a throwback is the Club's space. It's in the basement of the Parish House of All Saints Church in Brookline, in a space called the "dining room," though there is no obvious way to dine in it. The church above interrupts BCC meetings with thunderous processions and indistinct singing -- giving the impression that some dark and ancient ecclesiastical mystery is being enacted elsewhere in the building.

And then there are the old-school nametags, the wearing of which is strictly enforced, and the ancient sign-in registry. But the club values both continuity with its past and community in the present. This fact was impressed upon Bostonist when Glassman, after a lengthy excursus on the architectural history of the Boston wharfs, reflected on the Waterfront field trip. "Someday, we'll likely show shots from this trip at the same exhibit, and we'll see all the different things that everybody saw."

Organization: Boston Camera Club
Membership Requirements: $35 fee, an interest in photography, and, presumably, a camera.

See work by BCC members at its current href="http://www.brooklineartscenter.com/events/exhibitions/bcc.html">exhibition
at the Brookline Arts
Center.