Forest of Galtres Camera Club

Monday 6th October 2014

President, Keith Roberts, opened the proceedings welcoming everyone present to the start of the new season. He especially welcomed those who had come for the first time to the club. An evening of Audio/Visual presentations was ahead and as Keith said in his introduction who could there be better than the ‘master himself’, Allan Green FRPS, to show AV at its very best. It is so easy to think that having seen several of Allan’s AVs that you know what to expect. To some extent that is true. There will be quality photographs and great music woven together to tell a story or follow a theme. There will be humour and surprises on the way. But even knowing all that, there is still a sense of awe and sheer wonder at Allan’s inventiveness and originality as the last AV of the evening comes to an end.

The AVs included, for example: Light Maketh Pictures, Signs of the Times, Hoffnung, Portrait Gallery, Our Street, The Chocolate Box, The Fir Tree, Wordsworth’s Lakeland, The Journey.

Signs of the Times was full of humour embracing the ambiguity of interpretation. One sign stated that the gentlemen’s toilet was out of order, please use the floor below! Hoffnung was based on the cartoons of Gerard Hoffnung, who as a young boy came to England to escape from Nazi Germany. His cartoons were of musicians and Allan cleverly wove several of them together to some great orchestral scores by Beethoven, Bach, Britten and Percell. The Fir Tree was a personal light hearted story. When his son was a very young boy, Allan had recorded the sound of his laughter as he watched a Christmas circus on the television. He probably did not imagine he would use that recording in an AV presentation almost fifty years later but he did. It helped Allan present a sense of Christmas all those years ago. The tree of the title had been planted in the garden at the end of the festivities and, of course, over the years had grown too big for its location. Never one to miss a photographic opportunity or the chance to produce yet another original AV, Allan used time lapse photography to record the felling of the tree sometime last year. Over eighty images were recorded as the tree surgeon, clearly harnessed, gradually removed all branches and equally gradually reduced the height of the tree.

Many thanks to Allan for producing yet another great start to the season. Next week, members are asked to bring images taken during the Tour de France and also remember to bring images to be entered for the first of the club competitions to be judged at the end of the month, Standing out in The Crowd and Street Markets.