OPS Weekly Newsletter 12 January 2025
- Please send your “intimate ‘scapes” to Adrian C for selection. Adrian sent out an email earlier today
- Last week’s meeting Tues 7 January: Phil and Pete’s Show – Planes, Trains and Imbeciles
Before the presentation we were treated to an old (no one admitted how old) photograph of our two presenters in a very Chas and Dave pose… and they duly started to ‘rabbit’.
First up was a digital version of a colour ‘slide’ audio-visual presentation about a train journey to and from Gatwick airport. No ordinary passenger journey but one in the driver’s cab.
Pete got the opportunity to have a cab ride in a Thames Turbo on the Gatwick Express through an old school friend and Phil was fortunate to be invited as well.
They went to Reading Cow Lane depot, got in the cab and ran up into the station to await departure. The weather was dull to start out with, it was a challenge to get good slow shutter movement effects. Also trying to get the right exposure for inside and outside the cab was a challenge. Should they use fill-in flash or not? Using slide film in those days was always a ‘take it and see the result sometime next week’ approach. No instant gratification. More akin to delayed dismay.
Off the journey went to Gatwick and there was a shot of the plane coming into to land to prove they got to their destination. The images were all very good, even if the point of view was very restricted, and compositionally they certainly had leading lines throughout!
Phil then ran through the film cameras he had over the years, starting with the Kodak Box Brownie, dabbling with his dad’s 6×6 Weltaflex, then a Zenit and onto Pentax plus also his darkroom equipment, before the switch over to digital.
Phil is a member of a local steam train enthusiast’s club – Cholsey and Wallingford Railway which he joined in 1986 – and he showed his shots of steam locomotives being regenerated and being run. He then moved on to wildlife and nature. He lives near fields that are the feeding grounds of a herd roedeer and muntjac deer and he had very impressive images of these skittish animals. He then moved onto street, which has its own skittish animals and then landscape before finishing on ‘marmite’ – images you love or pass up – and called for audience participation in the form of expressions of BOO! or HURRAY! for each image.
In the second half of the evening Pete showed a series of images from last year. Twice a year there is the Gypsy Horse Fair in Stowe. Pete said that taking photos of people at the fair is trouble free. There are three types of approaches: candid, request or requested. The requested ones are interesting. People will come up to Pete and ask for their photos to be taken. The people pose as they want, the photo is taken, the subject asks to see the photo on the screen, the response is very complimentary then they move on.
The portraits captured the subjects very well and placed them firmly in their environment. Single, family groups, friends. Many people posed with hand gestures. All looked at the camera with a confident gaze. Who was in charge here?
Pete had seen a very large skip parked near the entrance to the field where the fair is held. It had been painted in an odd way and proved to be an excellent backdrop. Pete got some great shots of children posing naturally in the finery in front of the skip. An excellent series of portraits.
Next up were comic shots from Marwell zoo before Pete moved on to street shots in Weston-super-Mare. His shots of the seaside town were superb. He has a particular and unique eye for a photo and the results are consistently star-quality images.
He ended the evening with stunning infra-red shots of a dilapidated barn. Unfortunately the barn is no more but Pete did manage to capture its final glory.
A superb way to start the new year. Many thanks to Phil and Pete for such an enthralling evening.
- Next meeting Tues 14 January 19.30: Round two of the Rosebowl Competition
This round of the competition is between Oxford Photographic Society, Pinner Camera Club, Northfields Camera Club and Harpenden Photographic Society. The judge will be Micki Aston.
- Upcoming meetings in January 2025
Tuesday 21 January: Astro-photography with Gareth from London Camera Exchange. Gareth will take us through the ins and outs of astro-photography then there will be an opportunity for us to have a go, so bring camera, tripod, shutter release cable, and warm clothes
Tuesday 28 January: Oxford based photojournalist Adrian Arbib will present some stories he has documented. Adrian has covered many protests in the UK. His photos of protesters, who faced often violent private security forces in muddy fields, high in the trees and even underground trying to protect a much loved beauty spot near Bath from a proposed by-pass, was documented in a book called Solsbury Hill – https://www.solsburyhill.org.uk/
Adrian’s website is: https://arbib.org/
- Programme Secretary vacancy
We have a full and varied programme for you this season thanks to the hard work and excellent choices by Les. Unfortunately, due to unexpected changes in Les’s work commitments he cannot continue in the role and we need someone to step forward to start the planning and booking of speakers for next season’s programme. Please do contact me or any other committee member if you are interested in taking on the role.
- Events photographic in and around Oxford
OPS’s Winter Exhibition, the Westgate Library, Westgate Shopping Centre, Oxford
Many thanks to everyone who put their prints into the exhibition and to everyone who helped mount the images. The exhibition looks very good so please do go and visit and enjoy the variety of images on show. It runs to the end of January.
Bird Photographer of the Year Exhibition
An exhibition showcasing impactful and stunning images of birds taken from around the globe in 2024 is now open. Oxfordshire Museum, in Woodstock, is hosting the Bird Photographer of the Year exhibition until late February.
The Oxfordshire Museum
Fletcher’s House
Park Street
Woodstock
OX20 1SN
Saturday 11 Jan 2025, 10am-Sunday 23 Feb 2025, 5pm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8n8yr28jdo
Bettina von Zwehl: The Flood
This exhibition will feature photographs by London-based artist, Bettina von Zwehl (b. 1971). Von Zwehl’s aim is to rekindle wonder and curiosity as critical tools for exploring new ideas and practices.
https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/ashmolean-now-bettina-von-zwehl
Don McCullin talks to Richard Ovenden
The Bodley Lecture and Award of the Bodley Medal: Life and Work
Thursday, 3 April 2025
6:00pm-7.00pm Sheldonian Theatre
£8 – £20
- General photographic interest
‘Steam and smoke’ – recording town’s last foundry
Forty years ago, a group of photography students embarked on a project to document the workers and operations of a foundry in Dorset.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg8gr31k73o
Nostalgia and passion fuel young couple running old-school photo lab
“It all started as a small passion project,” says Fabriccio Díaz, 28, who, together with his wife Lucía Ramírez, 25, runs the only fully operational photo film development lab in Central America from their apartment in Guatemala City.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77j7n4kyy5o
Couldn’t put it down: David Hurn’s photographs of people reading – in pictures
In 1983 David Hurn met one of his photographic heroes, André Kertész , and jokingly suggested that, when he reached Kertész’s age of 89, he would remake his seminal volume, On Reading. True to his word, the Magnum photographer has now done so. Wherever Hurn travelled as a photojournalist, he took images of people reading books, magazines and, lately, on mobile phones. “One of the things that happens in every country in the world is people read,” he says. “It’s lovely to read – the touch of the paper, the ease of being able to check back a few pages. But we’re at a time now where we’re not quite sure whether, in the future, books on paper are going to disappear.”
Solar sculpture and winter landscapes: photos of the day – Friday
The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world
World Sports Photography Awards 2025 winners revealed – in pictures
The World Sports Photography Awards are the only global awards for sport photography and are designed to recognise and celebrate incredible sports images and the photographers who take them. More than 2,200 professional sports photographers from over 96 countries submitted more than 13,000 images across the 24 categories to this year’s competition, which all tell compelling stories of the emotion, passion, athleticism and focus that are at the heart of sport
Fight for the spotlight! Portrait of Britain winners – in pictures
From Black equestrians to wild swimmers and a giant onion, these photographs were selected by judges as representing the resilience, diversity and spirit of the UK