Our third Members Evening of the season provided an opportunity for members to share ideas and information on a wide range of photographic topics of interest.

A short presentation was made on using neutral density filters and long exposures to create the desired artistic effects. Discussions widened to all types of filters that can be used and the pros and cons associated with their use.

Cheat sheets, or aide-memoirs as they might more politely be described, were shared covering a vast array of subject matter in an easily understandable and readily downloadable manner. We will look at the best ways to make this information easily available so members can pick and choose depending on their needs and projects being pursued.

We hosted our annual battle with Cricklade Camera Club which was judged by Sandie Cox, who is a member of Bristol Photographic Society.

Despite using many of the images that had secured victory for us in an earleir battle this year, we were soundly beaten by Cricklade, whose collections of images resonated more strongly with the judge than ours did on this occasion.

Congratulations to Cricklade Camera Club and we look forward to our next encounter in 2026.

Thomas Peck entertained and educated us with his Zoom talk featuring a diverse range of architectural images taken in several Eurpean locations, and a host of tips and techniques that had been employed in their creation.

Many of his images of buildings were taken in black & white, using long exposures to create ‘fine art’ photographs of modern architecture, which have become very popular recently. Tom explained the importance of initially surveying the building from several perspectives before setting up his tripod and putting his neutral density filters to work. He looked for shapes, curves, lines, symmetry, vanishing points, angles and reflections to heighten the interest and impact of the final image.

He shared ideas on how to work with converging verticals by having a reference ‘true’ vertical in the image to provide balance. Several of his images featured a human to provide a sense of scale and he creatively used negative space in some bridge images to focus the viewers gaze. Not all his pictures had been taken with a high-end DSLR and some very impressive mobile phone images were shown.

Tom concluded his talk with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images of a Belgian bridge, which he had transformed with his post-processing work and a lot of patience. Without doubt, this talk has given us a lot to work with as we prepare our images for an Architectural competition in February.

Our annual Christmas get together with partners took place at the Angel Hotel where we enjoyed festive fare and good conversation that extended well beyond photographic matters. Such was our enjoyment of the evening, and our relaxed state, that we dispensed with appointing a photographer to record the event and all had an evening off!

Our first competition of the season featured both “Open” and “Animal Kingdom” images and was judged by Simon Caplan from Bristol Photographic Society. A modest number of prints were submitted and the Club is making a concerted effort to encourage more members to participate in print submissions.

The winning Open image was ‘Dragonfly’ which could equally have been entered into the other competition as insects form part of the animal kindom. The winning Animal Kingdom print was ‘The eyes have it”

A healthy number of dpis were submitted and the Open category winner was ‘Mother Love’, a touching capture of a mongoose with her pup, and ‘Sandpiper and crab’ won the Animal Kingdom category.

The judge provided comprehemsive critiques on all the imges along with many suggestions to consider.