Ron Nicolls and Carl Hardy At its annual banquet on May 12, 2022, the Sioux City Camera Club presented its inaugural Fran and Vernice Kingsbury Meritorious Service Awards to Ron Nicolls and Carl Hardy. This award is named after longtime Club members Fran and Vernice Kingsbury, formerly of Ponca, Nebraska. Fran passed away in January. His 100th birthday would have been next month. Fran was a member of the Sioux City Camera Club, the North Central Camera Club Council (N4C, which he co-founded), and the Photographic Society of America for more than 65 years. He became a Fellow of the PSA in 1972. Fran and Vernice together provided decades of leadership and service to the photographic arts in Siouxland, in the Midwest, and around the world.

Nicoll’s introduction to the Club goes back 50 years to May 1972, when he attended the banquet at the Normandy Restaurant as the guest of Kevin Martin. He became a Club member in September of that year. Nicolls served extensively as an officer in the Club: VP in 1978 and 1979, President in 1980 and 1981, and Treasurer from 1982 to 1988 (doing double duty as Program Chair from 1982 to 1985). A second tenure as President followed in 1989 and 1990. Nicolls twice served as chair of N4C conventions hosted in Siouxland, in 1984 with Randy Williams and in 2000. In 2000–2001, he was President of N4C, and in 2004, he received N4C’s Founders Award.

Hardy is also a past president (1986 and 1987) of the Club, but most members know him best for his current essential role in so many Club and N4C Entry Level and Advance Level Photographers of the YearDenis Hirschman and Douglas Conrad activities. He is the editor of the N4C Handbook and the N4C Directory. He also chairs the N4C Video Essay and Club Communications contests as well as the N4C Pictorial (Color) and Altered Reality Print Competitions. For the Club, Hardy is the longtime editor of its award-winning Sioux Scope newsletter. He coordinates judging when the Sioux City Camera Club judges N4C contests, both print and digital. He is the longtime sender of pictorial and altered reality prints to N4C for the Club, and he stepped up to take on the N4C digital submissions in recent years as well. Hardy is also called on frequently when judge chairs have been required for Club competitions.

End-of-year awards were also presented at the banquet. Mitch Keller received four end-of-year awards for his digital and print photographs. Douglas Conrad received three awards. Denis Hirschman received two end-of-year awards. Ron Nicolls, Teresa Hebert, and Lucas Harbeck received one award each. Douglas Conrad was named the advanced level Photographer of the Year, and Denis Hirschman was named the entry level Photographer of the Year.