Kidlington Photo Group – February

We ended the infamous 2020 with a cheerful Show & Tell social evening before Xmas, presenting several photos of ourselves from a young age. This time we decided to have members send their photos to our Secretary, Lesley Adams, beforehand, who kindly put them into one file that she could share on screen easily in our Zoom call while different members talked about their respective pix. This avoided some of the time spent in the past working out how to share from different devices (though that has its own social aspect). Our group is nicely varied, so we saw a number of time periods in the photos; good chat was sparked by shared memories.

We kicked off the to-be-better 2021 with guest speaker Victoria Hillman, who showed us “Forgotten Little Creatures”: wonderful artistic photos of plants and wildlife plus interesting information about them, with an eye to improving conservation. We highly recommend her! You can buy her book: Forgotten Little Creatures, celebrating smaller species by bringing together photography with scientific and historical facts. Victoria is part of the current judging panel for Bird Photographer Of The Year (BPOTY) and was a judge for the British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA) in 2018 and 2019.  

On 11th January we enjoyed our internal Take Three competition: we put in up to three photos each (those members who want to). It’s a fun evening, separate from our competitions for Photographer of the Year, so people can show off more unusual images or ones that they’d like feedback on.



A Girl and a Baby Bird’ by Melissa Bastin, Take Three competition winner

That week we also had the second round of the Rosebowl competition between four clubs in the Chilterns Association of Camera Clubs (CACC). In the old normal it was often hard to get to a hosting club further afield, but Zooming enabled a number of members to attend the meeting, and hopefully be inspired by the variety of images. We didn’t win.

February will feature a competition, two guest speakers and short members’ talks. Our next competition, involving ’Open’ and ‘Street’ themes, is on 1st Feb. If you’d like to see photos from ‘Oxford Lockdown’, join us on 8th February for Stuart Bebb’s take on the historic event. Non-members can join in the evening for only £5 (including Eventbrite fee): pop along to www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/kcc-photo-group-31385270707  to find our upcoming event listings. When you buy a ticket you’ll be given a link to that virtual meeting. Welcome!

Our other guest speaker in February is Chris Upton, with ‘Thoresby: The End of the Mine’: 22nd February. This will also be accessible via an Eventbrite link. We’ve had good numbers of visitors this way, which supports our inclusion of special guest speakers whom we wouldn’t normally be able to book; and it gives people from afar a chance to enjoy the presentations.

On the 15th members will give short talks; this is titled 10×8 (a play on the common print size) but is usually more like 4 speakers than 8, for about 20 minutes each, which works well. Should be a good variety of topics and photos.

Kim Benson, January 2021