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Visitor Information: The RPS Gallery and coffee shop will be closed on Saturday 7 December

Perfect Reflection

CHAIR: Kath Phillips ARPS

Kath first used a camera when she was very young and bought her first serious camera (Pentax K1000 SLR) for a trip to India and Israel as the result of a Goldsmiths' Company Travelling Grant in 1977. She was hooked from then on! Travelling and photography have featured large in her life since and she was delighted in 2018 to be able to return to Israel in search of images for an A panel.

She has been Digital Communications Co-ordinator for the Group since 2018 and was elected Chair in 2022.

Kath believes firmly that travel and photography are natural partners and enjoys being able to share her travel experiences through the images she takes.

SECRETARY: John Speller

John started taking photographs while at school and has passed through the stages of a home darkroom processing black and white prints and latterly colour prints and reversal in the family bathroom. Having previously set up a light-room in the spare bedroom he has now bought a 5th generation digital camera and lens system.

Whilst retired, other activities leave him wishing that he had more time to be able to take more images, balancing those that please him against those which are required to succeed in the market, competitions or distinctions panels.

TREASURER: Justin Cliffe ARPS

Justin joined the RPS - and the Documentary Group - about 10 years ago, when his interest was principally in street photography. He was their Treasurer for 8 years, during which time he gained his LRPS - with a travel-based panel.

Retirement offered the opportunity to satisfy his wanderlust - but on a much more leisurely basis so he joined the Travel Group in 2018.

He was awarded his ARPS in 2019 for his panel of images taken in and around the City of London – showing, however, that travel begins at home.

In 2020, Justin joined the Travel Group committee and in 2021 became its Treasurer.

Communications Officer: Susan Stuart

Sue started experimenting with an old manual family camera when she was about eight, and her enthusiasm for taking photographs grew via family holidays to using darkrooms and processing negatives, encouraging others to do the same via running photo societies as a student.  She then continued to take photographs as she began to travel more, both in the UK and overseas.  Her passion for capturing experiences and moments, wherever she may be, has endured despite time constraints.  At times, the number of photographs taken has run significantly ahead of processing and printing, and she has now moved to digital and finally managed to organise the archive!  At last, she also has more time to travel and focus on photography and she continues to learn and be inspired by fantastic photographers and photographs.

Engagement and Events Officer: David Short ARPS
David has been passionate about photography since his father bought him a camera when he was eleven years old and been passionate about travel since his first overseas trip when he was twenty and trekked, with a friend, to the source of the River Ganges.
He worked most of his life as a TV cameraman at BBC TV Centre in London.
More recently, he has been a tour leader taking British clients all over the world and in the last few years, has been taking large groups from the USA around the UK.
David has been a member of the RPS for many years and obtained his LRPS in the 1980s and his ARPS with a travel panel from Antarctica in 2005.
Pakistan became his 100th country visited last year and he wants to keep travelling as long as he can. In a Facebook post recently, David wrote that the Group's April conference provided 'the chance to talk to others about the the best things in life - travel and photography!'
Travel Log Editor: Patricia Mackey ARPS
Patricia grew up in a family of enthusiastic photo takers. No family event was complete until her Grampa had taken all of the exposures on his instant Polaroid camera. For her 18th birthday, he bought her a Minolta Riva Zoom EX with a 35-70mm zoom and fancy button for macro. She still has it along with his Kodak Flash Bantam. 
Her parents also had a love of travel which they have also passed to her, and she now combines both hobbies. Work permitting, this averages two significant trips a year and international travels have included Ethiopia, Nepal, Peru, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Eswatini and Chernobyl. Covid has resulted in spending more time visiting locations closer to home. On joining the RPS in 2020, it made perfect sense to join the Travel Group.
COMPETITIONS COORDINATOR: Sue Hutton ARPS

Sue Hutton has always enjoyed taking photos but would not necessarily have described herself as a photographer until, in 2010, she bought a very expensive camera but couldn't work out why her photos were blurred. She took the Digital Photography course offered by the Open University and the rest, as they say, is history. Her interests are eclectic, that is to say she follows no specific genre. She has begun using her smartphone more particularly after being confined to hospital for five weeks in 2023 and taking a course with Brendan O'Sé.

She started designing websites in the mid-1990s at the birth of the world wide web, while she was overseas. In fact, she's been very lucky to have lived and worked overseas for several years, starting off in Botswana, then in Libya, Uganda, Sri Lanka and latterly Oman.

She just wishes she had had a better knowledge of photography at the time.

Colin Howard FRPS

Photography has been an important part of Colin's life  since the age of eight when his parents gave him a Box Brownie, with his first ‘travel’ photographs being taken on a junior school trip to Amsterdam in 1960. As a teenager, there followed a swift learning of how to process prints in his parent’s bathroom. This eventually transformed into a love of darkroom work later in life.  Although he has long since embraced digital photography, he still occasionally exposes a roll of film to remind him of his photographic roots.

Colin's travel photography has always been driven by themed projects, nowadays with a book being the principal mode of output.  His fellowship was gained in the new photobook genre by taking a poem by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and illustrating this with photographs of Lisbon. Currently, he is working on a major project illustrating the poetry of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado which has taken me to a number of less frequented Spanish cities and towns.

 

 

Dimitra Salmanidou

Dimitra has been passionate about travel photography since a very young age. She bought her first DSLR in 2013 to document her travels and never stopped thinking about her next destination. She has been lucky to capture some exotic and faraway places like Hawaii, Patagonia and India and she never misses an opportunity to capture Greece where she was born. She started taking photographs systematically when the pandemic hit and studied photography at the London Institute of Photography. She joined the RPS Travel Group in 2021 and has been a co-editor at Travel Log since 2022. She particularly enjoys food and urban photography and can spend an awful amount of time capturing the perfect shot! 

Liz Bugg

Liz has a love of travel, pretty much anywhere in the world. She is never too far away from her camera, wherever she am. Liz enjoys capturing images of people in their natural surroundings, and often the images she takes when out and about are often the images that she is most pleased with. She says,"To catch a smile, a look, a movement, a fleeting moment of joy, says much more to me than a photograph where the person is fully aware that they have a camera in front of them."

Liz is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and a member of  the Bath Photographic Society and PhotoBath.  I am also in the pool of photographers that cover Larkhall Football games.

She can often be seen helping out with practicalities at Travel Group events.