The Giants of Photography do not all have to be photographers like Fenton and Eisenstaedt. There are giants out there that make an immense contribution "behind the scenes". And at the Awards evening in 2019 I was lucky enough to meet one of these and present Professor Alan Bovik with the Society Progress Medal and HonFRPS.
I was reminded of the occasion when my January 2020 edition of The Journal arrived, containing a feature on his work with portraits by Harry Borden HonFRPS. Al Bovik works on "the perceptual science of image quality", in other words what makes a picture look good to a human viewer. His work is used to enable mobile device users to share perceptually optimised picture-viewing experiences with others.
In addition to being a metaphorical Giant of Photography he acts the part too. Getting towards needing a wide angle lens for this image!
Al's work particularly resonates with me as I have a professional interest in smartphone images used to communicate information. I am off to Silicon Valley later this month to debate this and other image quality issues at the Electronic Imaging symposium. I am looking forward to meeting other RPS members there too.