Photo Club Turnout To The Opening

I belong to two clubs of photographers and one meet up group. The club members number approximately 25-30 people, I have known these folks for upwards of 10 years, some as long as 20-25 years. The turn out to the opening night? Only 3 of 30. I had some photo club friends with very good reasons for not attending the opening, and that's very understandable but 3 out of 30? That plain old sucks in the support department. I also belong to a meet up group, these people I barely know and have never met in real life, as a group they arranged a photographic outing meet up and I believe over 20 of them showed up at the opening night. Maybe this a reflection on my personality, people I know do not show up, people I do not know do show up! I can be rather opinionated when it comes to photography, aggressive and demanding when it comes to working hard and devoting yourself to your craft, maybe that rubs people the wrong way sometime.

Strangers with an interest in photography show up but people you have known for 10-20+ years do not?  I have to make more of an effort to show my support for club members who have shows (a rarity) in the future. I guess people also like what they like photographically and don't want to be bothered with the other stuff. The work I see in Edmonton  is  quite often nice pretty well made imagery but often it's empty photographs lacking in originality and interchangeable with work done in hundreds of clubs worldwide . Documentary photographic portraiture is not their thingy, even when shown in a very nice gallery like the VAAA, to each his or her own, people like what they like(there goes that opinionated stuff again!).

Kind of worried about the turnout for my solo show in March of 2013, the Kaasa gallery is a very big space and with a turnout like on the 19th again, it might be a pretty empty room.