Summary of 2025-26 club activities
13 November - Photo art challenge. Ten club members brought along their own creative art, inspired by the work of Stan Farrow we saw during his presentation the previous week. Despite having such a limited time to prepare their submissions it was remarkable to see so many images and just how creative our members are in producing photo art, often a genre not commonly seen during club competitions outside of the digital art category at the club's annual exhibition. Each member described why and how they created their images which led to some discussion by those present. Most of the artwork submitted had been processed using software such as Photoshop in order to produce the final result from what may have been, in the example below from Ann Smith, a very simple subject such as pieces of plain paper.
6 November - Photo art - A talk by Stan Farrow. Stan describes himself as a creative digital photographer. When he took early retirement a few years ago, he returned to university to study Art History, to follow a strong interest in Modern Art. Nowadays he enjoys applying his interest in art to his photographic work which has been ongoing since childhood. In this Photo Art talk he showed the inspiration behind some of his creative photographic artwork, also describing how it was produced. He is always far more interested in turning his photography into art, rather than producing work for competition purposes, although often the two go hand-in hand. He greatly enjoys using Photoshop creatively to make his digital art, especially still-life work with layers of texture. Having said that much of his work is simple to create at home and involves few digital skills whatsoever.
Here are just a few examples of his work, © Stan Farrow, shown during his presentation:
30 October - There were 28 PDIs and 32 mono prints entered in the 1st round of the open colour PDI and Mono print competitions judged by Geoff Young. He gave a fair critique of the images on display and offered his opinion of how some of the images could be improved. In the PDI competition he held back 10 images before awarding amaximum score of 10 to two images from Ann Smith and Tim Cheshire. In the Mono print competition he held back 14 images and awarded maximum marks to the images from Angela Karney, Ron Boon and Mike Hall.
PDI Open section:
Cormorant on an rusty hulk by Tim Cheshire and After the road cleaner by Ann Smith
Mono print section:
Medicine Lake, Alberta Canada by Mike Hall and Meiji shrine Buddist contemplation by Ron Boon
Winter Clematis by Angela Karney
23 October - Maintenance work at the church hall required this meeting to be changed to a Zoom only event but this did not deter members from submitting a range of images as PDIs. The subject for the evening was Photo disasters and what the judge said and the objective was to allow members to air their views on why they may have liked their particular images and what they meant to the photographer even though the images may not have always been seen favourably by others. Overall a full and entertaining evening.
16 October - Our 1st open Colour prints competition of the season was judged by Tim Morland ARPS. 37 images were entered and during a well balanced critique he held back 11 images for further consideration before awarding Julian Hall (2 images) and Pete Baldrey the maximum score of 10 points for their images as seen below.
Egrets and Lion siblings by Julian Hall
Breaking the rules by Pete Baldrey
9 October - An informal club meeting where many members shared some of their favourite images or those that they simply liked and which, on occasion, may not always have been appreciated by external judges in competitions. The range of photographs was wide in terms of when the image was taken and subject matter - portraits, street photography, landscapes, wildlife, flowers and abstracts. Members gave their reasons for wishing to share their image, what it meant to them and the why and how they may have taken the shot. A full and very enjoyable meeting with many interesting stories behind each of the photographs, information that often we don't get to hear during events such as club competitions etc.
2 October - A Cranleigh Camera Club meeting where members shared some of their photographs taken during the summer as part of the summer challenge The Joys of Summer. It included any subject that reflected joyful summer experiences. In total nearly forty photographs were shared stimulating excellent conversation and feedback and whilst there were typical images of summer others were less so, including an outstanding photograph of a badger.
Here are just a few of the images shown during the evening.
25 September - Making sense of the landscape - A talk by Eddie Hyde in person at the Baptist church hall.
The talk was Eddie Hyde's personal take on how to meet the challenges of landscape photography.
The main themes were:
- Composition (How much of what can be seen should be included in an image)
- Lighting and weather and options for variations (Right Place at the Right Time)
Quoting Ansell Adams “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer and often the supreme disappointment”, Eddie regarded this as extremely apposite. While we can travel to a destination that holds the potential to deliver great images if the lighting and weather are not “right” then maybe we will not obtain any images
That said, his talk went on to explore what makes satisfying and artistic landscape images. How to find compositions in less obvious places but where also there is more chance of getting an image that has not already been photographed a thousand times ie an image that is truly our own, together with understanding what are the best lighting conditions and what options are available for when the conditions are not “ideal”.
Here are a few sample images, copyright of Eddie Hyde, discussed during the evening:
18 September - Our first club meeting after the summer break was an informal event hosted by the new club chairman Mike Guy and it was an opportunity to welcome and introduce new members to the club. Phil Copestick had put together a slide show showing a number of images created by various members on their mobile phones, which was a mini project, held by a small group of members during the summer break in order to explore various camera phone modes and settings including techniques such as using the camera upside down. This generated much discussion before we eventually broke for refreshments and socialising for the remainder of the evening.
A few examples of the mobile phone pictures, extracted from the slide show, are shown below.
