Appropriately, the start of the fiftieth year of Forest of Galtres Camera Club, began with an audio-visual show by Allan Green FRPS, one of the club’s founder members. A mark of the esteem in which Allan is regarded in the world of AV happened earlier this year when he was guest speaker at the Royal Photographic Society’s AV day at Leeds Trinity University. The afternoon of the event was when Allan shared his witty and also more serious sequences; he gave insights into how his embryonic ideas are developed into award winning sequences. On Monday, Allan showed just eleven of the one hundred plus sequences he has made over the years. They demonstrated a variety of skills in their imaginative production; some were supported by music others by the human voice or a combination of the two; the timing of images as they faded/blended one into the other in a variety of ways perfectly matched the mood of what was said or played.

Sequences:

1.London Calling began with an iconic image of St Paul’s Cathedral taken on 29th December 1940 by Herbert Mason during the blitz; Allan created the drama of that time through sound and visual effects and the words of London Calling Christopher Wren by Hugh Chesterman;

2.Book of Beauty was a collection of flowers from delicate snowdrops to vivid tulips and beautiful pink roses;

3.The story of Edward Elgar;

4.Silhouettes: a collection of weather vanes against impressive skies but where the skies were often transformed to support the subject – a flock of blue sheep for the shepherd or furrows for the farmer and his plough share;

5.Landscape of Stone led through the Dales to Brimham Rocks to Bolton Castle;

6.Water o’ Tyne sung by Sir Thomas Allen. Allan had accompanied this song with sepia and monochrome close up details of boats, oars and mooring rings; he concluded with the colour of the Tyne and the bridges of today;

7.One Hundred Images: no story but a collection of images linked by ingenious transition from one to another based either on shape, lighting, occasionally subject, colour tone or line flow; to make sure no-one had nodded off to the gentle strains of Bach’s accompanying Goldberg Variations, a wake - up call in the form of a gunshot was heard. The image it accompanied? One of the two below, evidence of the shot in the image itself;

8.Wordsworth’s Lakeland moved from grand landscapes to close up detail of all that represents this special part of the world and the inspiration it gave this great poet;

9.Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling inspired the images to match the subject;

10.Vanishing Forest referred to the history of the Forest Of Galtres area of 100,000 acres

and finally

11.Hoffnung : 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 Purcell.

This was the perfect start to the fiftieth season of the club.

Next week, John Potter LRPS will be presenting Creative Landscape Photography. If you are not a member of the club, but interested in this aspect of photography do come along for this particular evening. Just £3 on the door.