The First Meeting of the New Session: "Travel Panel" (9th Sept 2008)

Roger Dye donned his Presidential Red Bowler, and silence descended on an audience of 38 people. Roger commented that despite many members still being on holiday we had a room-full of eager participants. And he was pleased to see so many new faces. He hoped to see them all regularly at the club, taking a full part in the proceedings. He had a first pleasant duty of presenting to Alan Saunders a Certificate of Merit, earned at the last L&CPU Exhibition. Alan had not been present at the L&CPU special meeting to receive his certificate then.

To start the session, an evening of members images from recent holidays had been planned - 4, 5 or 6 images said the new Syllabus. It became clear that though they were good photographers, many of our members were lousy mathematicians!

Colin Pickles began the Print show with a dozen or so prints relating to his recent holidays. Trevor Rogers tried to redress the balance with a single picture summing up this Summer’s holiday - a forlorn wife looking through a cottage window at the downpour outside. Tony Redford reminded us of better days with four prints showing sun-rise over Bryce Canyon. Graham Johnston apologised that his poor sight had led him to believe that he could show 456 prints. These were A4 size to facilitate carrying so many, but he limited himself to showing only half a dozen images of his trip to South Africa. Geoff Robinson was surprised to find he had 7 prints relating to his trip to Venice. Although some were straight shots he confessed to digital manipulation of several of them.

After an early tea break during which the Print Box was removed and the Digital projector system set up, the digital show began (There were no film slides to show!) John Garner began with a Pictures-to-Exe presentation of his visit to Sydney, Australia, where their son was living. Some basic instruction was necessary as the show galloped through his dozen images at rapid pace. The P-to-E programme allows on to set the delay between transitions to some reasonable value (say 10 seconds) but by default uses only about 3 seconds. John found it impossible to speak quickly enough to make his comments before the image changed. Given the small default time, the alternative is to press the space bar once to retain the image, until on pressing the space bar a second time, the count-down is resumed. If the transition has already happened, it is possible to move backwards using the left hand arrow on the keyboard. This does presuppose that there is enough light to see the keyboard!!

John Bawden gave a P2E presentation of a climbing holiday in Wales. John Ade had visited Portsmouth and the Spinnaker Tower, from which fine views (and a cup of tea) are available. Gordon Robson had been intrigued by the apparent ramshackle wooden buildings he found in Zermatt. Joyce Streets had visited South America where she was attracted to the bright dresses of the ladies, and the Llamas Apparently the natives dress to impress the tourists and each picture requires a monetary contribution to the local economy. Jill Hargreaves was impressed by the Vulcan Bomber and we saw several images of this monster plane at rest and flying. Richard Scaife could not fly so high, but illustrated his photographic skills with several high-flying motor-bikes and Riders. The pair set off together; almost parted in mid-air, having shot up a ramp, and presumably were re-united as they hit the ground. We never saw the final landing sequence, so still don't know if there is a steady stream of recruits to take the place of their dead heros. Bill Chadband related, via a 5-image P2E presentation, the sad tale of the demise of his wife’s hair comb.It was all to do with a naughty Cockatoo.

Colin Pickles completed the evening with several images from out recent club Berlin visit. There were several other possible images to be shown, but as the time was now 10.10pm these would-be-authors withdrew their images and allowed us all to go home satisfied with a successful evening. It was the handing-in night for the first Print competition, but President Roger Dye announced that new-comers would be given an extra weeks grace, so that they would not be penalised in the great race to become club Photographer of the Year.

 

Bill Chadband