It was a delight to hold our second face to face meeting since the rude interruption of Covid-19, and to welcome a trio of creative and entertaining speakers.
Linda Weville FRPS filled the two morning sessions with a varied and eclectic mix of subjects, held firmly together by her distinctive style. Her images are wonderfully subtle, full of light and softness, gentle and atmospheric, diffused and misty. The work was presented in a number of themes, beginning with her personal favourites, and using a wide range of techniques – fast freezing shutter speeds and languorous long slow shots, blurring movements whilst retaining fixed details. In contrast, her ICM images smoothed and distorted the picture in sympathy with the subjects. Multiple exposures, often combining sharp and defocussed images of the same scene created ethereal effects. Landscapes, seascapes, mists and water, miniature, minimalist, macro and a rusty wheelbarrow providing abstract pseudo landscapes – all succumbing to her gentle touch. In her presentation she quoted Jonathan Swift - "Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.", Her photographs made visible what many of us fail to see.
Robert Friel ARPS took the early afternoon slot beginning with an intriguing response to the restrictions of the past twenty months. Obliged to travel into London for work, he used his iPhone to record not just what he saw, but how he felt as the year moved from the vibrant positive moods of spring and summer, through the muted colours of autumn, to the darker and more challenging times as the days shortened. Often shooting through the train window at a moving landscape, camera movement was not so much ‘intentional’ as ‘unavoidable’, which he used creatively to great effect. Astonishingly (to me at least) was that all his processing was done using iPhone apps – the ultimate in computational imaging. Beyond the train windows, walking to the office, more slow shutter images of London streets, and of the few commuters and office workers still around. Two extended projects completed his presentation – ‘The Pond at the end of the Road’ – an extraordinary in depth essay on an unprepossessing village duck pond; and ‘Water Worlds’ – a study of a blue bucket, a yellow hosepipe, ICM and a fantastic imagination – both sets revealing beauty in most unlikely places.
For eclecticism, Martin Addison FRPS would be difficult to outdo. His AVs covered an incredible range of subjects and techniques, which I can only do justice to by listing them:-
- Landscapes of ‘Namibia’,
- The Architecture of the ‘Rotterdam Cube House’,
- Sea and ice-scapes with added polar bear,
- Abstract impressionism in ‘Mucking Around’,
- Understated focus – the impressionistic ‘How Sweet the moonlight’,
- ‘Back Lane’ – a dog’s eye view of Tewkesbury,
- The minimalism of snows in ‘Hakaido’,
- The anti-minimalist chaos of ‘Misty Woodlands’,
- Op-Art in the wild colours of ‘Electric’,
- The retro vintage grunge style of ‘Home Sweet Home’ (faux tin-types of a derelict house),
- Land and seascapes of ‘Harris’ plus the abstract “landscapes” of a rusty crash barrier and water tanks in ‘Red Sun’,
- ‘Venice at night’, and to cap it all -
- A surrealist psychedelic interpretation of ‘Lucy’ (in the Sky with Diamonds).
- An extraordinary creative body of work.
13arry 13arker