Author: Keswick Photographic Society

For the latest meeting of Keswick Photographic Society, one of our many well-travelled members, Keith Snell, took us on a journey of contrasts from the snow-covered Lofoten archipelago above the Arctic Circle in Norway to the desert state of New Mexico just above the Tropic of Cancer in the USA.

Keith illustrated how the snowy landscapes of the Lofoten and Senja islands in Norway are often bathed in pastel shades from the early morning sun:

although some of the monochrome images brought a sobering shiver to his presentation. There were some iconic images of fishing villages with their traditional red barns:

as well as striking aurora borealis displays in the winter sky.

Keith is well-known for his exploration of more creative photography styles and there were a few images on show taken using intentional camera movement (ICM).

The creative images came much more to the fore when we moved to the deserts of New Mexico when, instead of ICM images, we were challenged by colourful expressionist landscapes.

These were created from multiple exposure images produced in-camera by manipulations of the camera settings. As Keith explained, this approach was a major reason for visiting northern New Mexico where he was seeking to take inspiration from the pioneering American abstractionist painter Georgia O’Keefe, who had lived and painted in that area for over fifty years. Indeed, he stayed in the very hostelry where O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico and which had also hosted famous landscape photographers like Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, not to mention DH Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Carl Jung!

But Keith started his journey in southern New Mexico and visited a national wildlife park that is host to sandhill cranes and snow geese that migrate there every winter from northern America and Canada.

He also visited the otherworldly White Sands national park with its pure white sand dunes derived from the underlying gypsum rock. The area is near to where the first atomic bomb was detonated and has become familiar from the recent Oppenheimer film.

When moving to the rocky outcrops of northern New Mexico, we were reminded that the lands originally belonged to native American ethnic groups and we were shown images of a still-inhabited adobe Pueblo settlement.

The main show though was the geological features of the area with the amazing shapes and colours of the rock formations.

The evening was notable not only for the variety of striking landscapes on show but also by the variety of photographic techniques used to produce the images.

Keith’s enjoyable presentation was well received by our members both in the meeting room and by those attending on zoom.

Keswick Photographic Society holds a number of formal internal competitions with invited judges, and as a society enters a number of external ones, but last week’s meeting consisted of a very informal session with members looking at each other’s images.

David Leighton: “Winter Road”

Members supplied six images in advance which were then circulated and, on the night, attendees were split up into groups of three to four with another group participating via Zoom only.

Graham Smith: Bluebells and Hawthorn”

The intention was to allow members of all levels of experience to have a discussion about the merits of their images in a less threatening format than in a formal competition with a formal judge.

Marta Almar: “This is home son”

Not only did it provide feedback on the photographs, it gave members the opportunity to look carefully at other people’s images and discuss the good, and not so good, points and to consider why some of the images “worked”.

Tricia Martin: “Essex Skippers”

Although low key and relaxed it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable session.

Richard Petty: “Kelvingrove”

In fact there was some difficulty experienced dragging people away from their discussions, first to have their half-time tea and biscuits and finally to wind up and go home!

Antony Melling: “Slow Tide”

 

 

Tony Marsh, our chairman, took the stage on Wednesday 25th September for his talk “A Naturalist with a Camera”, and gave an individual & thoughtful talk illustrated with images taken this year locally as well as on his travels around the UK and on a specialist photography trip to Bulgaria.

Since being introduced to the possibility of seeing the magical contents of the Observer’s Book of Birds in real life as a child, Tony is a life-long nature-lover. He reaches for his binoculars first, and photography is a “bonus” rather than the sole purpose of the trips, but with modern technology it has now moved on from being a technical challenge to not only enabling a record of sightings, but also freezing and magnifying details of the natural world’s beauty which would otherwise not be seen.

He pointed out a variety of these in an entertaining and self-deprecatory style which belied the excellence of the images, many of which, although not taken to impress competition judges, are winners. He showed some unique action including a spectacular sequence of a rabbit chasing a stoat.

His slight dissatisfaction with the outstanding images (although still of wild animals) which he has taken at commercial set-ups with a staged environment and sometimes lighting resonated with the society’s members, often preferring the more natural results showing “how it really is”, with a hard-won but sometimes also half-seen glimpse of an animal shaded by distracting foliage.

Simon Roberts

 

Our meeting on September 11^th was a presentation by the Hertfordshire based photographer, Simon Turnbull. He specialises in intimate landscape, nature and travel photography and has won numerous awards including Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. Although now living and working in the south of England he was brought up in Keswick and still visits regularly. As a consequence we were able to see several images of locations well known to us but from a new perspective. These included some beautifully evocative woodland photographs taken in Borrowdale.

Simon described what the term “intimate landscapes” means to him. This involves photographing only a portion of a landscape scene in a particular way, often to try and create a feeling of narrative. The subject may be a single leaf or rock or tree. Simon showed us several panels of these images each of which were carefully curated, often to help enhance a narrative.

We were given valuable practical advice and tips which would apply to all forms of photography. Planning ahead, having a check list of equipment (Simon recalled an instance which must have happened to all of us at some time, of arriving at a shoot having left the camera battery charging at home!), preparing your equipment in advance, making notes of ideas and suggestions.

More importantly perhaps, he described his thought processes and working methods when out on a shoot. These included working slowly with careful attention to the composition of his images, “dawdling” to allow time to see what actually may be in a location, trying to adopt a child like view of the surroundings, trying to create a sense of mindfulness.  He showed many beautiful, ethereal, intriguing images which I am sure inspired all those present to look at their own photography in a new light.

Richard Jakobson

At our first meeting of the new season, held on Wednesday 4^th September, one of our long-standing members, Alan Walker, gave a talk on his 50 or so years pursuing photography as a hobby. Alan explained that his interest first developed in his early twenties when he focused mainly on candid and street photography. In the 1960’s, together with a friend, he put together an exhibition of monochrome prints titled “London Faces” which was commissioned by the Greater London Council. The exhibition detailed many aspects of life in London that today no longer exist. In those days there were no digital cameras and Alan had to carry out all his own processing in a dark room.

Whilst Alan was still in full time employment frequent trips to the Lake District led to a developing interest in landscape photography resulting in a desire to travel further afield to visit other stunning landscapes such as those found in New Zealand, Chile and Argentina and Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Yellowstone in the USA

On his retirement in 2006 Alan moved to the Lake District and he was able to spend far more time on his hobby. A trip to Cuba in 2008 allowed him to focus once again on street and candid photography. Subsequent trips in pursuit of people images have included Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia. These have provided a valuable opportunity to experience and learn about other cultures.

In 2010 a long weekend spent in Scotland photographing wildlife kindled his enthusiasm for what was to become his main photographic interest. He recalls spending half an hour in a hide waiting for a red squirrel to appear and being bored to tears. However once the squirrel turned up he was fascinated and permanently hooked. Since then he has returned to Scotland on many occasions and travelled to all seven continents in pursuit of wildlife images. Africa is a particular favourite.

His first trip was to Namibia when he and his wife spent a month exploring the country unaccompanied. Trips to South Africa, Botswana and Kenya have followed.

Alan also has an interest in portraiture using both studio set ups and outdoor locations. Recently he was to be found underground in a disused Victorian reservoir near Nottingham photographing models dressed as gangsters from the 1930’s. On another occasion he spent a day in a theatre in Lancaster photographing ballet dancers.

Alan enjoys photographing a wide variety of subjects and he illustrated his entertaining talk with examples from each genre, many of which have won awards in national and international competitions.

Julie Walker

 

Keswick Photographic Society has for several years entered the interclub competitions within the Photographic Society of America. As well as clubs from the USA, the PSA has clubs from all over the world. We entered five of the competitions last season. All the competitions are played on a “league basis” and we are in “Premiere Leagues” of all the five competions we entered. Overall considering the size of our club we again did remarkably well, actually winning two of the competitions, Mono and Photojournalism.

In the Mono competition five of our submitted images received Merit awards including

“Time to Depart” by Annie Given

and “House Arrest” by Alan Walker

In the Photojournalism competition there were again five merit awards including:

“Speedway Crash” by David Woodthorpe:

and “Taken Down” by Bob Given:

In the Nature competition we were placed 6th with Merit awards for 3 images including:

“Goshawk with Pheasant” by Ronnie Gilbert:

and “Bison Foraging in Snow ” by Julie Walker

In the Travel competition we were 8th with Highly Commended awards for:

“Kichum Castle and Ice” by David Carine

and “Loading Straw” by David Woodthorpe

Finally, in the Colour competition we were placed 4th equal, only 2 points behind the winners. Over 140 clubs from all over the world enter this competition.  Merit awards were given to:

“Taken Out” by Bob Given:

and “Milky Way Landscape” by Richard Jakobson:

Not many people would want to spend time swimming in shark infested waters but that is exactly what this week’s speaker, David Keep, does on a regular basis. David is an accomplished photographer and scuba diver who is well known for his underwater images. He not only spends time in the water with sharks but he uses bait to attract them in order to photograph them. Despite having spent many hours in the water with sharks David has never been attacked and only on one dive, when the sharks were approaching him from behind, did he feel at all nervous. David describes sharks as his most reliable subject, they are guaranteed to turn up when baited, and he showed many wonderful images of them.

This is the second time that David has given a presentation to the club on his underwater photography and on this occasion he explained how he achieved many of his shots. He did this through the medium of underwater videos. As well as covering the techniques he uses to attract and photograph sharks his videos included footage of other dives including ones to photograph shoals of fish, sea lions and underwater caverns.

Sea lions are another favourite subject of David’s as they are very playful. Indeed, this video included a section showing several playing with a stick. He said that they also wanted to play with his diving equipment including his fins, mask and hoses. He described sea lions as naturally intelligent and inquisitive animals and said that his time with them had been the most enjoyable week ‘s dive he had ever experienced.

The cavern dive in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico was very different.  Here it was essential to have an experienced guide as diving underground can be very dangerous. There is no light in the caverns and you have to be extremely careful not to disturb the sediment on the floor of the caves as this would reduce the visibility to zero.

In some places there were openings up to the surface and here shafts of light penetrated the water. David commented that overall it was a very eerie experience.

David is also a sports and portrait photographer but his favourite genre is underwater. Generally he dives to a depth of less than 15 metres as below this level there is very little light. As it is he takes lights with him to illuminate his subjects.  A typical dive lasts around an hour. His videos were a fascinating insight into how he achieves his images, demonstrating how he sets about achieving great compositions.

Julie Walker

Our 4th Open Compettion was judged by Simon Allen from Dumfries. There were 37 print entries and 56 PDI entries.  In the print section the best print and best nature image of the night was “Autumn Arctic Fox” by Simon Roberts:

Best landscape of the night was “Wailing Widow” by Ken Rennie:

In addition “Give Us A Kiss” by Alan Walker was also awarded 20 marks:

In the PDI section “Beware When the Landlord Takes His Jacket Off” by Alan Walker was the best PDI and best portrait image of the night:

“Impressionist Gathering” by Keith Snell was the best creative image of the night:

Two other images in the PDI section scored top marks of 20 points. “Puffin at Nesting Hole” by Tony Marsh:

and “Wild Kestrel on a Very Windy Day” by Pete Whieldon:

All the entered images can be viewed on our gallery pages:

2023_2024 Competitions

 

 

 

 

The topic for our second set subject competition of the season was chosen and judged by our member, Alan Walker. There are two main advantages of having Alan as a judge. We benefit from his years of expertise in the critique of our images and secondly it gives the rest of us a chance of winning something!!

“Looking Up” proved a popular topic with 59 entries from 21 members. In the spirit of the forthcoming Olympics Alan awarded each image Gold, Silver or Bronze. At the end of the evening he then gave his his “best of golds”.

The Best Image of the Night was “Friston Forest IR” by Ade Gidney

Best ‘Scape was the cityscape “Lloyds Building” by Richard Jakobson

Best Nature was “Looking Up 2” by Simon Roberts

Best Architecture was “StopLight, Valencia” by Annie Given

Best Abstract was “Le Pesche” by Philip Cartwright

Best Creative was “Lady of the Lake” by Jo Knight

Best Sport was “Over Easy” by Annie Given

Best Portrait was “Looking Up” by Bob Given

Best Astro was “Seascale Beach” by Richard Jakobson

Best Street was “A Ball in the Hand” by David Woodthorpe

Best “Ahhh shot” was “All that Glitters” by Jo Knight

All the entered images can be seen in our gallery section:

2023-2024 Competition Images

 

The club were very successful in this year’s Northern Counties Photographic Federation Club Championships. We won the print competition with Saltburn coming second and Gosforth third. Bob Given was voted Best Print for “Anna Clears”:

Tricia Rayment’s print “Marbled White on Scabious” was also awarded maximum marks:

In the PDI competition we tied with Gosforth. The result was eventually decided following a 10 time iteration of their tie-breaker process………and we came second! However Alan Walker’s “Bobcat Hunting Prey” was voted Best PDI:

and Julie Walker scored maximum marks for “Otter Family in Shetland”:

A remarkable result for our small club