The new committee gathered at the Redford's at 7.30pm to review the arrangements for the new Session. The first consideration was to get out to members' the new syllabus, the latest Focus, and the invitation for all previous members to renew their membership. Joyce Streets had printed the syllabus and letters and Bill had printed the August edition of Focus. Treasurer Geoff Robinson, gave us the latest financial position and agreed to follow up the question of insurance for the relevent club items. He reported that £20 had been forwarded to the Poynton Show for the Photographic competition prizes.

Frank Hutchinson detailed the advertizing in hand for the club's series of Digital Sessions. It was agreed that "Course" might be an inappropriate word since it might imply competition with the various college photographic course on offer (some of which might be leading to a qualification). We wanted to encourage participation by newcomers who might be put off by a "Course". It was thought a series of "Digital Forums" was a more encouraging description. Tony and Bill agreed to produce A5 "flyers" which could be circulated and be picked up as reminders by interested bystanders at the Poynton Show, in Libraries, and such places. Tony would also produce a larger, more eye-catching poster to use where appropriate. Since Tony would be absent for the first Digital Forum, Bill Chadband had agreed to do it. This first session, considering aspects of Digital Cameras, would be a bit of an unknown in terms of the mix of abilities or knowledge of the participants. We could learn from it for future sessions. The 2nd session would be based on Computers Monitors and Scanners, and the third on producing Prints the image. This would take us up to Christmas. Sessions thereafter would relate to improving, manipulating, and using the image.

John Coles denied rumours that he wished to replace the Selection Committee by an impartial Computer, but pointed out that there were times, particularly in the Autumn term, when competitions came thick and fast and it was impractical to keep calling a meeting. He would then have to be guided by the marks images had obtained in previous competitions. He was well aware that, depending upon the judges whim, the rank order could change drastically.

John noted that, via Tony, we had accepted the date of 16th February 2005 for the return (10prints + 10slides) battle with Chapel-en-le-Frith Club.

Gordon Robson noted that Tony Pioli would be the judge for our next Annual Exhibition; Mike McNamee would judge the inter-club digital print competition whilst Malcolm Kuss would judge the inter-club slide competition. A proposed speaker for the talk on the Friday had still to be confirmed.

Tony Redford reported that 29 NCPS + 8 South Manchester members had put down deposits for the North vs South battle at Keswick in November.

In Colin's absence President Richard Scaife noted that the Christmas dinner on 14th Dec 2004 was at the Alma Lodge Hotel which was now under new management.

Colin had investigated costs of a possible trip to Rome, which he had discerned was the most generally supported venue for 2005. He had figures for a 7.30am departure from Manchester on Fri 29th April, with a possible return on Bank Holiday Monday evening arriving Manchester 11.oopm. This would give 3 nights and effectively three and a half days in Rome for a cost of £340. Although this was the most favoured option of the three presented, several committee members wondered if we could not go to Spain, or Portugal (Lisbon) more cheaply.

The 2nd half of the meeting was devoted to details of the impending Poynton Show, where we are the official photographers, and Jon Allanson does the judging. Inevitably many members are away and not available for this event. As a result they do not feel that they should be participating in these decisions. It might be more appropriate, in future, to have a special sub-committee of known participants, meeting separately, to agree these details.

Bill Chadband

Members gathered in the unfamiliar setting of the Cinema room of the Poynton Community Centre for the meeting on Tuesday 7th September. Inevitably several members were still on holidays but the incentive to attend was the handing in of Prints and Slides for the 1st Quarterly competition. The meeting was the opportunity to try out the Club's Digital projector and ensure that there would be no problems when it came to the Digital course the following month. The Manager rolled down the screen; Tony Redford set up the Projector and Lap-top, and President Richard Scaife welcomed old and new members. Joyce Streets, membership secretary and past President, received membership forms and cheques from those who had remembered to take them along, The programme suggested that members should show images from club outings but this brief was interpreted liberally by several members. Tony and Dorothy showed images from Prague both the actual Prints and Digitally projected versions of the same.

Roy Cheetham produced a DVD show of the Prague visit which took us nicely to the tea break. The Hall Manager laid on the tea/coffee and biscuits- members putting their 50p pieces into the saucer in recompense (so- at these monthly meetings the 50p really is tea money!). In the 2nd half Bill Chadband gave short presentations of his trip to Hunstanton (Norfolk) using Powerpoint, and of his trip to Madeira using Pictures-to-exe. Both presentations had been stored on a 64Mb compact Flash card. Richard Scaife presented images of his trip up the Rochdale canal to the new City stadium. Richard's negatives had been scanned to CD by the developers (Agfa). Brian Turnbull decided to keep his CD of images until a later date, noting that there was a considerable wait whilst the images (in .tiff format) were loaded into the computer. Some prints from the Poynton show were presented on a large board by Jon Allanson. Jill thanked those club members who had been able to support the venture. The slide projector was then set up and slides by several members were shown. The evening finished at about 10.15pm

The meeting on 14th September was shared between Stuart Forbes and Colin Pickles.

Stuart spoke of the early history of photography. He was more interested in the people than the technical aspects. His wide-ranging journey took in Alexandria, Constantinople and the Renaissance in Italy. He speculated on how the loss of a knot of wood in the wooden side of a roof-top room, otherwise closed to the midday sun, would have provided the first camera obscura (literally dark chamber). The subsequent pin-hole camera, with tracing paper instead of film would have been the natural progression, and enabled artists to conquer the problem of recession, or perspective. Stuart noted the many attempts to use chemicals to record the image, instead of tracing paper, culminating in the present-day developing and fixing process using silver salts.

After the tea interval Colin shared with us his passion for Scotland. He regularly skied there and had attended photographic courses (on Skye) visiting some of the most photogenic sites. He had images, going back years, showing how the changing weather and seasons affected the look of the place. Colin used images of the Caledonian MacBrayne steamers to punctuate his movement from place to place. He moved regularly around the islands, particularly Skye, and some of us took to trying to count how many steamers MacBrayne really had!

The introductory music, said to be the Skye Boat Song, was unfortunately, too soft to be heard by most of the audience, and would have benefited by being played through the amplification system which Bill had thoughtfully brought along, but which remained unused by either speaker!

Aeroplanes Galore!

Those members with a love of Aeroplane photographs would have been in their element on Friday 17th September, when club member Brian Bower had a one-man show at the Visitor and viewing centre of Manchester airport. Club members had been invited to the preview of the exhibition, and several duly turned up to see Brian's collection which he has built up over the years. My favourite was the action shot of the Concorde just taking off, with the hot air of the jets nicely diffusing the image of the buildings behind. Apparently Brian had been given special permission to get closer than normal.

Besides viewing the exhibition and drinking the wine we were able to move around outside in the warm evening to marvel at the illuminated, sleek, Concorde parked less than 30 metres away. In thanking Brian Director Peter Hampton told us that Brian's was the first one-man show they had attempted. He also noted that Manchester's Concorde would be provided with a Hanger for winter. When asked about insurance for the plane he said it was treated as a work of art, rather than a machine.

Bill Chadband

John David Coles

Bill Chadband

Wilmslow Guild Interclub Competition -16th Oct

It was surely an omen that this editor found his way blocked by a great heap of stones when he tried to attend the competition. Conscientiously following the diversion signs we ended up going down Bourne road away from the Guild. This error became plain when we turned onto another (main road) with little chance of turning or reversing. Never mind; go Left, Left, then Right will surely get us back on track. Well it might have done, except for the dead end roads on the way. We crept into the darkened room only five minutes after the start, in the middle of a run-through of the slides, too late to know the owner of the dis-embodied voice reading out the titles, or indeed the name of the judge. The second problem then made itself plain: We could only see the top two thirds of the slides, sitting as we were, four rows back. It was a small comfort that the judge regularly suggested that an image would be improved if the bottom quarter were masked off. How lucky we were to be seeing the slide as the judge intended!.

At half-time, talking to a man called Peter, in the Gents toilet, I discovered that each of the eleven clubs had submitted 7 slides; 3 to be shown in the first half, and 3 in the 2nd half. Apparently competing clubs were to confer at the interval as to which of the 4 slides they would withdraw. At the interval I also found that NCPS had twelve representatives: The Scaife's, the Robson's, the Hutchinsons, the Chadbands, Brian Turnbull andJon Allanson, Jackie and Alan Bromage. But who decided on our slides I never did discover. On the way to tea I spoke to Ian Stewart and as the 2nd half began I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ian was indeed the judge. Throughout the competition I sat next to a charming man called George Higginbottom and basked in reflected glory when, at the end of the contest, George's slide of a Whinchat on his yellow gorse was acclaimed the best slide in the competition. [ How many of you were aware that whin is another name for gorse, or the gorse bush?] Initially Dave Hollows' slide of Venice "After the storm" also scored 15, but pushed to choose a winner, Ian felt obliged to choose the bird.

And what of the Old Boot (highly polished!) I hear you all cry? Well, 20 marks from the last judge somehow turned into 6 from this one. Catching the Rays scored 10; whilst Ceiling Detail, Prague managed 11. At the interval our 27 total only managed to beat Frodsham (26) and Sale (24).

In the 2nd half "Foxgloves" (13), Jazz on the Bridge, Prague (11) and "Midnight Sunset"(10) gave us a grand total of 34, lifting us up to 5th from bottom place. Rumour had it that John Coles was ensconced on his holiday island and therefore untouchable!

Final Table

Altrincham and Hale 66

Sale 62

Chester 71

Stalybridge 57

Frodsham and District 57

Warrington and District 69

Hoylake 70

Warrington PS 58

Mid Cheshire 74

Wilmslow 74

NCPS 61

It transpired that Peter (Gents Loo) was the inspiration for the competition. Thank you Peter!

Bill Chadband

Gordon Robson (Exhibition Secretary)

Bill Chadband

Bill Chadband