That was the message when Andrew Mills came to the club on 18 th March After a talk densely packed with illustration and detail we came away with two main messages: “Club competitions do not produce the best photography”, and “Where is the light coming from? Light is the single most important element in photography” We also learned not to accept free drinks whilst engaged in a commercial shoot for a brewery. Andrew is a professional photographer with many years’ experience i

Graham Herbert’s home studio, 11 March 2026 Photography’s been part of your life for as long as you can remember. The outdoors and landscape your thing. So, what do you do when Covid comes along and we’re all locked inside? You could photograph the walls of your prison or point your lens wistfully out the window; you might buy or borrow a dog to photograph and/or provide an excuse for a limited outside meander each day; or you could, like club member Graham Herbert, build

The German fashion photographer Chris von Wangenheim said "I thought we were selling dreams - not clothes" ... Phil Penman has sold both ... A local lad from the Weymouth stable ... there must be something in the water down there! How can such a small place turn out so many good photographers? Peter Dench , Si Jubb, Iain McKell to name a few, and other than the funny water, the thing that binds them is that their images are all about the story. I guess that when you spend yo

It all started with a SupaSnaps Snappit and a work trip to West Africa where our current club chair, Andrew Crawford, took pictures that were important ... important because in the days of film, and more particularly, in the hands of an amateur with only twenty or thirty frames available for the whole trip, you really thought about what you pointed the camera at. You took photographs that meant something to you, or that were going to be used to help describe the place or even

Stan delivered an interesting talk to the club on Abstract Photography ... a difficult thing to define but Stan started off by delivering us this 'dictionary' definition. "Art in which the portrayal of elements from the visible world plays little or no part" Picasso went further and said "you must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality" Stan showed us a lot of images with different themes, using a whole host of different techniques, and f

There is a term in the film industry called 'wet down'... it's where you hose down the ground in a low light situation ... it creates contrast, reflections and texture ... If you don't have your own water bowser then us photographers have to wait for the rain, and when it does, you'll find Michael Wilson aka @atikus , standing in the middle of the road! He'll be trying to catch a reflection in the damp tarmac, or in the paintwork of a passing car. He'll be chasing shadows an

If Paul Mitchell did bumper stickers ... that's what it would say ... and whilst Autumn itself is so photogenic that Paul subdivides it into Early, Mid & Late, each with their own nuance, he doesn't neglect the dull, damp atmosphere of Winter that lends itself to sculptural images of the woodland, the hoare frosts of the promise of snow. Nor does he neglect Spring with the guarantee of new growth, blossom and a wealth of bluebells ... or summer, lush and full where the green

The Black Panthers , and the People's Park in Berkeley , where Janine fell into a very niche photography sub-genre of photographing your...

Obvious really, because right from the start it was clear where Carlos Guaritos sympathies lay ... He wasn't with the ex public...

Cape Disappointment, Exsaperation Inlet and Desolation Island ... seems like some of those early explorers needed a bit of a mood lift...

Peggy's Cove Lighthouse was where it started A chance encounter with a strange man on a deserted beach in Nova Scotia whilst on honeymoon...

Strolling is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live. Honoré de Balzac Last week we had quick romp...

Learn the rules like a professional ... break them like an artist ...

I once heard Stephen Fry recount a tale about shaking hands with Alistair Cooke (of Letter From America fame), Alistair announced that he...

It's fantastic when we get photographers of George's standing coming to the club to share his work but one of the things I really...

The opening gambit, for what turned out to be a very entertaining evening, was a series of vehicle accidents that happened right outside...

Before the talk, Peter told me about one of his early assignments where he was asked to photograph 'Faith' ... there are lots of things...

It's already been changed on the website but just incase you are relying on a printed version ... Stephen Leslie and Peter Dench are both...