Audio Visual Committee

Ian retired to Exmouth in 2015, and in recent years has been both Chairman of Exmouth Photo Group and President of the Western Counties Photographic Federation. He started making AV sequences in the mid 1980s, initially with slide/tape before pioneering digital methods in the late 1990s. In 2002 he was the first person to be awarded a Fellowship in AV with a digitally-projected panel. Ian has served several times on the ‘old’ AV Distinction Panel, and sat on the steering committee to update this to the Multimedia Distinction. He has lectured and judged AV events all over the country and abroad, and was Chairman of the RPS International AV Festival from 2009 to 2014.

Alastair is the editor of AV News. He started with AV back in the eighties in the days of two slide projectors. After a gap, he came back to the art when things had turned digital. He has enjoyed some competition success at various AV Festivals and enjoys sharing the world of AV with colleagues both established and new to the genre – hence his willingness to look after AV News. Alastair gained his LRPS and ARPS in AV and is a member of the Staffordshire AV Group. Alastair lives in Shropshire recently retired as the CEO of a professional engineering institution with much in common with the RPS in terms of membership and awards.

Keith started to make AV’s seriously in 2011 although he has been involved in photography since his childhood. He joined the society 4-years ago and achieved his Licentiate in multimedia in 2017 and is now working to apply for an Associate. Keith for a brief while took over as Treasurer in 2019 as a temporary measure  and accepted the role of Secreatry in September 2020 and feels delighted to be on the AV group committee.

He works full-time within sales for the ornamental aquatic industry and spends his working day visiting garden centres and aquarium shops.

Edgar, is a retired Chartered Civil Engineer living in Cardiff. As a member of Gwynfa Camera Club, it was there that he saw his first Audio Visual presentation back in the early 1980s. He was taken with use of light, blending images together with a soundtrack usually telling a story.  Edgar has been a member of the RPS AV Group Committee for a number of years, the last five as Vice Chair. He was elected as Chair of the Group in October 2019. For over 30 years Edgar was the RPS Organiser of the South Wales RPS AV Group and in 2015 was Chairman of the National AV Championship (NAVC). Since 2016 he has twice been the Director of the biennial RPS International AV Festival(IAVF). He has already started work on the 2020 event, the third he will have organised.

My professional background was in higher education, and I also ran my own management and leadership consultancy, before retiring at the end of September, 2024. However, my formative years were spent in a family made up of musicians and a photographer. My abiding memory is of the darkroom magic - the red light and the miraculous appearance of images in the developer bath. I remember the strings stretched across the darkroom, hung with drying negatives or prints , all at the tender age of 4 or 5.. I was hooked young. Despite being obsessed with the craft, I never took up photography professionally, but it became an essential tool in my teaching and research later in life. Transparencies were my ‘stock in trade’, but the processes were time consuming and, crucially, resource hungry.

Later, my interest turned to documentary photography, and I ‘discovered’ the storytelling potential of AV/multimedia. I am also interested in exploring the potential benefits of technological innovation in image making, while minimising their pitfalls (AI being a case in point). I have also been exploiting the use of drone photography (stills and HD video) in the storytelling narrative.

Sheila lives in Exmouth and started her photography with slides in 1986, joined Exmouth Photo Group where she was Secretary for 18 years, Chairman for 3 and now the webmaster.  She joined the RPS and was awarded an Honarary Life Membership in 2022.  In 2010 she gained her ARPS in both prints and audio visual. Was awarded an MPAGB in AV by the PAGB and also has FIAP awards namely an  AV-AFIAP and EFIAP with still images.  She was awarded in 2024 the Dobson Henry Award by the RPS AV Group plus a Life Vice President of the Western Counties Photographic Federation.

A keen photographer who enjoys all genres of photography and her main enjoyment is giving presentations with her prints and audio visuals to clubs and Associations far and wide.  Sheila has also had many years of judging experience.   At present Sheila has immersed herself into the Audio Visual World as she feels this is making the best use of all her photographs and a way of telling stories.

An Art and Design graduate, Andrew first lectured in a School of Art, later designing for live theatre and subsequently for BBC TV as Production Designer for twenty years. A photographer since the age of ten, he was the founder of the still-flourishing AV group of the Worcestershire Camera Club. He also instituted both Worcester U3A Photography groups, teaching Creative Photography for nearly twenty years, while his AV group is a growing band of fiercely dedicated sequence-makers. Andrew is a PAGB lecturer and judge, focusing on AV nowadays of course. He is also Design Consultant for our AV News magazine.

Martin has been an enthusiastic photographer for over fifty years, starting in colour slides and monochrome prints, then colour prints and now digital images. He achieved his ARPS in 1992 with colour slides and his FRPS in 1994 with Cibachrome colour prints and sits on the LRPS assessment panel. He has been lecturing since 1979 in slides, prints, and audio-visual as well as running creative photography workshops and demonstrations.

Martin started making creative audio-visual sequences in 1977 using two slide projectors, moving on to four projectors and now of course he uses digital projection.

Malcolm has been a keen photographer since his teens, and has been making Audio Visual programmes for over forty years.  He has developed a personal style in which excellence in photography, skill in the use of sound, and the creation of rhythm in the production, are interwoven to engage the emotions of the audience.  He is passionate about the power of AV, and is keen to encourage others in the medium.  A career in education has enabled him to be a respected assessor of others' work, and he has judged a large number of Camera Club, Regional, National and International competitions. 

He regularly gives talks and demonstrations at AV Days, camera clubs and photographic societies, and all sorts of special interest groups.  Malcolm has received much recognition in both National and International Festivals, and has won very many awards for his work.  He is a National Audio Visual Champion, having won this prestigious award in 2013.

He gained his Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1997 and was awarded his Fellowship with honours in 2000.  He has been recognised as a Fellow of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers and awarded the Master Fellowship distinction "Master of Audio Visual Arts" FACI(M), only the third person to have received this honour after Peter Coles and Ron Davies.  He has recently been awarded the prestigious EFIAP distinction in Audio Visual.  Malcolm has served on both the RPS Audio-Visual Distinctions Panel and the PAGB Audio-Visual Distinctions Panel.  He was one of the organisers of the 2022 National Audio Visual Championship.  For over twenty years Malcolm has presented an annual public AV show and supper raising many thousands of pounds for Macmillan Cancer Support, for many years with Maggie, and now with the help of AV friends. 

He is the Chairman of the East Midlands Audio Visual Group, and a member of FADE, the AV Group of Sutton Coldfield Photography Club.  He writes the AV Column in Film & Video Maker Magazine and is a regular contributor to AV News Magazine. 

Adrian quickly became a keen AV enthusiast in the 1980’s, having seen Richard Tucker FRPS using two projectors as a Nikon Ambassador. A few years later he gained his ARPS with AV and was an RPS AV Group Regional Organiser. Alongside his busy career in many facets of the professional audio-visual industry, he progressed in amateur AV to producing highly complex wide-screen 9-projector sequences.    

Adrian has always maintained his interest in photography, and after quite a long gap he re-entered the amateur AV world with renewed enthusiasm. He recently added a DPAGB in AV to his achievements, and thoroughly enjoys meeting AV friends old and new along with some competition successes in national and international festivals.

Mike has been a photographer for many years having been taught the basics of printing by his Dad in their kitchen when was a teenager.  His ARPS from the RPS was in visual arts with a panel of monochrome prints. He has been a keen AV worker for many years staring with slide based AV’s and two projectors, although its only since going digital in around 2005  that his interest in AV has grown significantly and has overshadowed his stills work.  He was awarded  his CPAGB in AV in 2019 and then was awarded his DPAGB in AV in 2022.

He is a member of both the Wilmslow AV group and  the Heswall Photographic Society on the Wirral, where he is also their AV organiser. 

Mike’s AV’s tend to be based on poems or short (usually fictional) stories which he both writes and voices.