Join us on Zoom at 7pm on Wednesday 4 February for a must-attend Q&A that goes behind the scenes of From Land— the ambitious **Royal Photographic Society Scotland coffee-table book project running throughout 2026. Hosted by Sam from RPS Scotland Events & Engagement, this session features Dr John Post in his dual role as From Land panelist and RPS Scotland Project Officer, offering rare insight into the ethos, expectations, and opportunities within the project. We’ll be talking vision, storytelling, what really makes an image sing on the page, and how your photographs can become part of a lasting publication celebrating Scotland’s managed landscapes. If you’re even thinking of taking part — or don’t want to look back later wishing you had — this is the conversation you won’t want to miss.

Stewart Wall MA ARPS NCTJ is a professional photographer, qualified educator, and long-standing contributor to the Royal Photographic Society. His career began in 1978 as a trainee photo-journalist at the Brentwood Gazette, where his first published image was a street photograph — schoolchildren caught in the energy of a snowball fight. That early assignment sparked a lifelong belief that the street is one of photography’s richest stages for documenting real life.

Trained through the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), Stewart went on to work across regional and national press while developing a deep commitment to photographic storytelling, education, and book-making. Within the RPS he has played a significant leadership role: he authored the official criteria for the Photobook genre and served as Chair of Photobook Assessments for two years, helping to establish contemporary standards for narrative photography within the Society. He also chaired and assessed Licentiate applications.

Over the past decade Stewart has become widely recognised for leading collaborative street photography and place-based projects, most notably the long-running Streets in the Sky trilogy (2015–2025), created with photographers at Sheffield’s Park Hill estate. His projects explore the street as a document of lived experience, social memory, and everyday performance.

Today, Stewart’s practice focuses on guiding photographers towards creative street photography projects, from first ideas through to zines and photobooks, using his own methodology which blends emotional mapping, sense of place, and sequenced storytelling.

In this talk, Stewart will share practical strategies for developing meaningful street photography projects, approaches to sequencing and editing for zines and photobooks, and insights from a lifetime spent documenting life as it happens.

Title: The Art of Choosing Paper

Subtitle: Understanding How Paper Influences the Final Print

Talk Description: Mark’s talk explores how paper choice hugely influences the final printed image and why it plays such an important role in the printing process.

Talk Purpose: By developing an understanding of how different papers behave - rather than relying on formulaic or habitual choices - you will be better equipped to select papers that support your creative intent and help your images translate more successfully from screen to print.

Mark’s Bio: Mark is a professional landscape photographer based in the north east of England. His passion for the subject comes from the love of travel and being outdoors in remote places.

Mark has been teaching landscape photography, post-processing and printing for over 20 years and runs photography workshops around the UK and abroad. Further details about Mark’s workshops can be found at www.markbanksphotography.com.