Visual Art Group - Committee

Having decided against art college, Andreas read Mass Communication at Münster and Berlin. This led to a string of news and current affairs jobs in radio and television before he settled in the localisation industry, freelancing on translation and voice-over projects.

In 2011, shortly after gaining his Associateship (with a panel of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi), he followed the Visual Art Group to Chester for his first residential weekend which proved to be the start of a long-term affair. A few years later he set up the Rollright sub-group which draws its friends from much of southern England, the Midlands and Wales, and in 2017 he was elected Chairman of the Visual Art Group where he is supported by a well-tuned and spirited Committee.

His main photographic interests lie in the texture and geometry of what surrounds us. This means that he tries to avoid distractions and prefers a long lens, with often abstract results that sometimes work better in sets. More recently he has also discovered the joys of travel photography, with heart-felt thanks to serendipity.

visualart@rps.org

John has been an RPS member for only 4 years, having discovered a passion for photography during his retirement.

He is the programme secretary for Adderbury Deddington & District PS and is keen to follow any opportunities for photography.

John has a wide interest in techniques and genres, ranging from landscape through urban to the wide range of material offered by the Visual Art Group.

A regular and enthusiastic attendee of quarterly meetings held by the Rollright Group, he also assists on the VA Group committee. Always eager to learn, John is pursuing understanding and gaining expertise in photography and image processing through the RPS distinction process, he was awarded ARPS in 2019 in Applied Photography.

RPS member since 2003, achieving LRPS via the City and Guilds route, studying under Clive Haynes FRPS, who is a recent recipient of the Fenton Medal.

I confess to never seeing my photography as "art", since the main motivation was merely to use a camera to record the people, places and events in my life.

Then the love of creating photographs became more than that, much more.

My heroes are the storytellers of Life magazine - photojournalists W Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, Bill Eppridge, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White and Leonard McCombe - but also those documenters who like Lewis Hines, who strove to make the world a better place by exposing injustice.

My favourite subject is portraying action and movement, although digital imaging, graphics, video and animations for social media are now the main expressions of my visual imagination.

I joined the Visual Art Group because I needed a challenge, something new to learn, exposure to different ideas, horizons to explore.

The Visual Art Group Circles are a perfect way to see the ideas of other members and to see the world through different eyes.

I started my journey in photography when I was 12 and joined the camera club at secondary school. This is where I developed my understanding of photography and the magic of capturing life and watching the images appear out of the chemicals, in the dark.

I gained my Licenciateship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2016 with a panel consisting of a combination of concert photography, architecture and nature with a combination of portraites and abstract images. I am currently working on my Assiciate qualification, which will be based around my music photographic images, featururing portraits, abstracted instuments and alterative post processing.

I've been a member of the RPS since then end of 2014, and a member of Banbury Camera Club sine 2005. As an active member of both organisations I have been on the committee of BCC ten years and the Visual Art Group for the last two.

visualartweb@rps.org

I was introduced to photography by my father, a GP, who was very keen - within the limitations of the time. He and my uncle (his brother in law) were always competing to have the latest gadgets. His interests covered everything from family to architecture to still life. He had a darkroom in the attic, although it was used mainly when he discovered the techniques of bromoil and transfer. This was probably Visual Art, though I didn’t ‘get it’ at the time.

I was encouraged to take pictures from the age of about eight with an assortment of borrowed kit. I still have many of them, though sadly my keen interest in trains - all steam then, of course - vastly outstripped my inadequate photographic ability.

Dad gave me my first ‘real’ camera, an early Pentax Spotmatic, to take on a trip to the US in 1970. It stood me in good stead for many years, despite an early fall at the Grand Canyon! At the time I was while reading Chemistry at Queen Mary College, London.

My other keen interest at the time was amateur radio, encouraged by my physics master at school. This led me to apply for a studio manager traineeship with the BBC but took me away from photography until I was lucky enough to get a 2-year posting to the BBC Relay Station in Singapore. Once there I was fascinated by the culture, sights and traditions and soon procured a Canon A-1 - tax-free of course, and this rekindled my interest, which has continued to this day.

In my early BBC days I became friendly with a young German, one Andreas Klatt. Though our paths through the years have been different we never lost touch and thus in about 2013 I discovered the delights of the Rollright Group.

My main area of photographic interest has always been Travel. In over 40 years with the BBC World Service I was lucky enough to visit many countries and always took a camera. I also took advantage of my employer’s parsimony when the cheapest airfare involved staying Saturday night although most work had ended on Friday.

Egged on by some of my RPS friends, I have recently gained my LRPS. The finer points of photographic technique are still to be learnt but in retirement - and in the company of like-minded photographers - I intend to have fun learning.

My very first camera was an all-plastic Brownie 127, when I was eight years old. Since then I’ve never been without a camera, latterly Nikons, and moving onto Digital in 2004 and now mirrorless. Starting in the age of Black and White, I used my University darkroom, then set one up in my father’s cold garage. Peter and I set up a permanent darkroom in our new house, and moved onto Cibachrome. Since moving to the Midlands, our A3 printer has been our darkroom.

I successfully applied for an LRPS in 1991, and joined the RPS and the Colour Group. We have been fortunate to have many opportunities for foreign travel, and my ARPS in 2004 was as a result of a visit to Yellowstone. Learning Photoshop in the 1990s was an exciting development for me, and I enjoyed exploring the possibilities of the new medium. Yes, all the various effects were fun to learn, but there is nothing as satisfying as getting an image, print or digital, exactly as I want it.

Having joined a slide circle in the Colour Group, I became co-ordinator of its print and slide circles in 1997, and when the Colour Group joined the Visual Art Group, I became coordinator there, and started the Email Circles, of which we now have five, together with two Print Circles. For me each new round in the email circle is like opening a new assortment box of chocolates. It is exciting and rewarding to see a new set of pictures each month, and to discuss the images online with the photographers. So I never tire of it.

I spent my formative years growing up in the East Riding of Yorkshire and after spending four years at the Kingston upon Hull College of Art I began my career as a Graphic Designer in London. I initially specialised in packaging design working on many well known brands. Following the economic downturn in the early nineteen nineties I decided to start my own design agency which, in a couple of years time, will celebrate 30 years! Unlike graduates of today I left art college with practical skill which have remained with me throughout my life, to this day I still sketch, paint and possess decent handwriting, until recently I was an active member of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators. I still continue to be a Member of the Chartered Society of Designers.

Since leaving art college and throughout my career I have always had a passion for photography which, up until the last decade, was totally film based. Indeed I’ve still kept all my film cameras and a dedicated fridge for my film stock. I became an RPS member back in 2004 and in 2007 gained my Associateship with an Applied panel. I followed this up seven years later by gaining my Fellowship in Visual Art. My panel consisted of 20 pinhole images which as far as I am aware am the first and only person to gain this accolade using this technique. Three years ago I was invited to sit on the Fine Art assessment panel, a post I feel privileged to hold and a role that has given me great personal satisfaction over the last few years.

Over the years photography has always been my hobby, being a release from the day to day running of a design business and a hectic family life. More recently making images has become a little bit more than a hobby though. I now run photography workshops, lecture throughout the UK, sell my images and now I even get paid for writing magazine articles! I will never put aside my design skills but have started to fill out forms with ‘semi professional photographer’ in the job description box!

My wife Sally and I will be celebrating thirty two years of marriage this year. I will always remember the day we met… on a crowded Piccadilly Line train! We just have the one son called Angus, who has now embarked on his career in the film and TV industry. If you keep an eye open you might even have seen his name in the credits on such productions as Star Wars, Broadchurch, Poldark and many more!

I have a long standing love of art and design, and have been a photographer for over 25 years. I have a BA (Hons) in Photography and Multi-media from the University of Westminster and I am a member of London Independent Photography.

For the last few years I have concentrated on fine art and still life photography. I am often asked about where the inspiration comes from when I am producing a body of work. I can only say that for me, it is all about looking: looking at other artists, photographers, magazines, and above all the environment we inhabit, in all its diverse and intricate forms. My preferred styles are very much centred on the abstract, contemporary, minimalist and sometimes conceptual. Focussing on the found object, both natural and man-made, I create images that I hope will stimulate the imagination and that can be shared in a celebration of colour and beauty.

I live in Chalfont St Peter with my wife, who is also a photographer, and we are both very active members of the Chalfonts and Gerrard’s Cross Camera Club.