Visit by Dalston Photographic Society: 28th October 2026

At our meeting on 28th October, Keswick PS were treated to a night of entertainment by Dalston Photographic Society. The event followed a different format to the usual talks Keswick are familiar with and it was a lot of fun.

Dalston began with a mix of photographs and AV (a video of sliding images to music) by Ian Gregory named ‘Garden Safari’, showing a fascinating selection of insects in the form of macro photography. Our chairman Tony Marsh was particularly wowed by the range and quality of the visuals – it was almost like watching a top-quality BBC wildlife production. We saw how potter wasps used caterpillars to feed their larvae and looked inside a nest box of a leaf cutter wasp which created individual pods for their larvae. We were introduced to cuckoo wasps and horsehair worms. The video finale presented the lifecycle of the cabbage white butterfly.

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Critique Evening: 20th October 2026

Unfortunately, the speaker for our meeting on 21st October had to cancel at short notice due to ill health but, luckily, we already had a critique session scheduled for Tuesday 20th October so members didn’t miss out entirely.

The critique was carried out by two of our longstanding members, Alan Walker and Dr Keith Snell via Zoom. In total 43 images were submitted by 12 different authors, some of whom are experienced photographers and others new or novice members. Overall, the standard of images was very high and Alan and Keith felt that many would do well in club competitions. The subject matter included landscapes, portraits, wildlife and sport amongst others.

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Mark Hetherington: ‘Cumbrian Landscape’, 14th October 2026

On 14th October our members were treated to a stunning presentation of local photographs by a full-time local photographer currently based in Penrith.  Mark Hetherington is an Associate of The Royal Photographic Society and was the winner of the 2026  International Garden Photographer of the Year. His work has featured in The Times Newspaper, British Photographic Awards and in The Trail, Amateur Photographer and Outdoor Photography magazines.

For all of us who live in and around the Lake District, we are fortunate to be in some of the most spectacular scenery in the country, if not the world.  However, most of us witness the scenery when it’s light and probably when it’s dry, too.  Photographers like Mark, whose remarkable images we have just witnessed, seem never to be indoors when there is a sunrise, sunset or in deed any other phenomenon or spectacle to capture.

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Basia Bogacka: ‘A Journey to the Arctic’, 7th October 2026

On 7th October we were treated to a journey to the Arctic by renowned fine art photographer, Basia Bogacka. The evening was split into two parts, the first featuring Greenland and the second Svalbard. Each section started with a fascinating telling of the very different history and geography of the two sets of islands as well as an insight into some of the current climate crisis, (not least demonstrated by retreating glaciers and sea pack ice), and geo-political considerations.

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Gerry Coe: ‘iPhone Photography’, 30th September 2026

At our meeting on 30th September members were treated to a masterclass with a difference.  There is an expectation that presentation images will have been taken with conventional cameras, however speaker Gerry Coe, a professional photographer from Belfast, showed a series of incredible images taken with his phone.

Gerry has 60 years experience of photography and is a Fellow of The Royal Photographic Society, a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photographers and a Fellow of The Master Photographers Association amongst others! He was the first person ever to gain a fellowship by submitting a panel of photographs taken on an iPhone rather than a traditional camera.

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1st Open Competition, September 2026

Competition nights are always popular at our Club, as they provide the opportunity for judges to give constructive advice on how our photographs might be improved and also allow our images to be seen by other members.

Our Open competitions allow pictures from any genre of photography and are divided into two sections: mounted prints and digital images which are projected onto a screen (called Projected Digital Images or PDIs). Points are awarded for each picture up to a maximum of 20, then the judge states their favourite from certain genres, eg landscape, and chooses their overall winning image.

Our 1st Open competition of the 2026/27 season took place on Wednesday 23rd September and our judge was Maybeth Jamieson MPAGB from Dumfries camera club.

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Alastair Marsh: ‘Wildlife Photography’, 16th September 2026

The latest meeting of the Society featured award-winning wildlife photographer Alastair Marsh. He visited us hot on the heels of multiple successes in the latest British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA). One of Alastair’s hedgehog portraits is featured as the front cover of this year’s BWPA book. His talk was subtitled ‘trying something different’ and was illustrated with stunning photographs of native species mostly close to his home in North Yorkshire. The images were outstanding both in their technical quality and the inventiveness of his compositions.

The inventiveness came from the ingenuity with which he arranged the photographic set-ups used to capture unique aspects of animal behaviour. The overriding aim was to remain as unobtrusive as possible so that the animals acted in a natural manner. To achieve this, much of the photography relied upon the remote triggering of the silent shutter of a camera that was often positioned inches away from the subject. He also subtly exploited remotely-triggered low level flashlights to illuminate either the subject or its immediate surroundings to produce evocative naturalistic images.

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