This photo is of me being sworn in as the first female President of the OPS.  This was taken at the Business Meeting November 1994 in San Francisco, which also happened to be the 25^th Anniversary of the OPS.  I’m surrounded by many of my lifelong friends, a few whom alas, are no longer with us.  Patrick Saine, CRA, past president, is passing the gavel to me. 

It was a bittersweet victory.   An OPS member since 1980, I had been and continue to be a strong advocate for the inclusion of more women, and technicians in particular, into our society.   It took 25 years to elect me, and there have only been two other female presidents since.  In a society comprised predominiately  of women, I would have expected this event to happen sooner, and more often.  Ladies!  Time to lean in!  In addition, I beat out my good friend and mentor, Michael Coppinger, of JMC Eye Photo for the position.  He and I went on to lecture together with JMC Eye Photo for the next 20 years.

I'm giving my first speech as President at the banquet same year in a maternity dress and here I am with "my BOD".  Lucky me, I was the only female!

While I will never again go down in the history books as the only female president, I may well still retain the title of the only PREGNANT president in the history of the OPS.

Denice ( Bartlett ) Barsness, CRA, COMT, ROUB, CDOS, FOPS

OPS President 1994-1996

Any information and/or published data much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

bob

A couple years later, armed with my CRA, I landed a job at another academic institution in Philly. I was a one-man show doing all aspects of ophthalmic imaging when the OPS announced the new Certified Ophthalmic Photographer & Retinal Angiographer (COPRA) certification. It looked interesting, especially since I performed almost all of those tasks on a daily basis. I studied hard and sat for the first exam offered in 1990. The technical aspects were right in my areas of expertise, but the high level anatomy, physiology, and pathology were intense! Good thing those were the areas I concentrated my study on. There was an oral portion of the exam conducted by Terry and Earl that was intimidating. They didn’t have very good poker faces and when I knew from their expressions that I got the first answer correct, I relaxed and managed to pass that section as well.

Suddenly I was no longer the smart a$$ kid from across town and I gained the respect of the old timers. I was invited to participate on several committees and become more actively involved in the OPS. Sadly the COPRA certification was eventually dropped to protect the accreditation of the CRA, but I was proud of achieving it and thankful for the many doors that certification and OPS membership have opened for me. Terry and I became good friends and I still poke fun at him for being such a curmudgeon when we first met!

In the course of several years, I attended many OPS annual meetings. But the one I remember most fondly was at the 1998 OPS annual meeting in New Orleans.  I had decided to dress up as the "Crow" and on my way to the banquet, I saw a group of photographers slowly walking to the banquet.  In the middle of that group was Don Wong walking carefully with his cane.  I quickly ran up behind him and put my arm around him.  Before the group could intervene to protect Don from this lunatic, Don just nonchalantly smiled and said "Hi Phil, you haven't changed a bit".  

Though I had been imaging for 9 years already, I was new to the OPS when I was asked to help with the first OPS Mid-Year destination educational program at Park City, Utah in 1984.  I was excited to meet and completely intimidated by all the seasoned and talented photographers I met there.  I'd been working in a private practice with no other photographers and i was absolutely self-taught, except for reading Emery Billings' monthly articles on ophthalmic photography in Ophthalmology Times.  I had no real sense of the quality of the images I was making or if I was even doing them correctly!  

The faculty had been very friendly and I felt accepted by the meeting team.  We were sitting collectively in the back row of the auditorium at the Claim Jumper conference center.  There I was, sitting in the midst of some true ophthalmic photography giants:  Terry George, Bill Nyberg, Emery Billings, Terry Tomer, Paul Montague, Dennis Makes, Sheila Smith, Michael Coppinger, Bruce Morris...  It was a heady moment.  We were listening to a lecture by Csaba Martonyi who was giving us a little mini-quiz on  technique.  I was surrounded by these imaging veterans who were casually shouting out the answers to Csaba's questions to keep the lecture going.  Csaba projected a slide that showed a large inferior crescent light artifact, and asked,"How would you eliminate this artifact?"  No one said a word!  I looked left and right, wondering why the answer hadn't been shouted out by the noisy back row folks and suddenly realized that while no one was saying anything, everyone was rotating their right hands in the air as if over a floating joy stick, and I was doing the same!  Hooray!  I had found community!  May be I DID have an inkling of how to manage a camera and take good photos!  Pretty soon we were all giggling over everyone's "ability to do it, but not say it!" And after that, students started to find their voices and Csaba no longer had to rely on the mouthy back row kids to supply the answers to his questions.

For me, it was a great memory, a great meeting, and my first excellent experience with OPS educational programs.