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Dougie Cunningham, our speaker on 27th November, is an award-winning professional photographer who specializes in landscape photography. He currently lives in the remote north west corner of Scotland and is the author of Photographing Scotland which contains over 800 of his photographs. This is an essential guide to any photographer wishing to capture Scotland’s dramatic scenery.

Dougie came to landscape photography through a love of the outdoors and adventure sports. His enthusiasm for landscape photography was nurtured in the Lake District and after six months spent exploring and photographing the dramatic landscape of Torres del Paine in Chile he put on an exhibition of his work at the Keswick Mountain Festival. As a result of this he was approached by The Great Outdoors Magazine to photograph the Scottish landscape and he has since become a regular contributor to this publication.

Photographing Scotland was a major project that took him all over the country including the Outer Hebrides, Skye, Shetland and Orkney as well as the mainland, and some places that he’d not visited before. He tried to explore beyond the well-known viewpoints and beauty spots and recommends this to others to escape the crowds. In his talk he described some of the magical experiences that he’d had as well as some of the associated difficulties such as carrying cameras and camping gear to mountain summits, camping on uneven ground and suffering numerous breakdowns of his unreliable but much-loved camper van. His book however caters for all levels of fitness and enthusiasm.

In addition to landscape photography Dougie also photographs weddings, events such as music festivals and other commissions around the country. During the Covid pandemic he updated and extended a couple of local walking guides. Dougie also drives the only ambulance in the remote part of Scotland in which he lives. This takes up three days a week but leaves him time to pursue his photography at other times.

We now break for Christmas. Our meetings reconvene on Wednesday 8^th January when we will hold our third open competition which will be judged by John Fare from Workington.

Julie Walker

The NCPF Annuals Awards Day was held at Clara Vale, Gateshead, on Sunday 17^th November. This is the ceremony for the award of trophies to the winning clubs and individuals from the 50 clubs of the Northern Counties Federation. Keswick Photographic Society won all three of the Club trophies, for its images entered into the Monochrome Prints, Colour Prints and Digital Images competitions. Individual trophies were awarded: to Alan Walker for the Best Monochrome Human Portrait

and for the Best Sport Print;

to Julie Walker for the Best Natural History Print

and for the Best Human Portrait Digital Image;

to Ken Rennie for the Best Monochrome Landscape Print;

and to David Price for the Best Colour Human Portrait Print.

Ken Rennie was presented with his trophy by the NCPF President, Gerald Chamberlain.

The other trophies were accepted on behalf of the other awardees by Dr Keith Snell as the Society’s representative at the ceremony.