Annual Exhibition – a flying start!

The Annual Exhibition is off to a splendid start with our traditional Preview Evening and very good attendance on the first few days.

Our Preview Evening on Friday was very enjoyable, with our families and friends, friends from some 40 of our sister Clubs across the region, some of our speakers and judges and our guest of honour, Walter Benzie, the President of the Royal Photographic Society, who made our presentations.  

The success of the exhibition and the Preview Evening is due to the hard work of our army of volunteers, especially on Friday evening that of  Sheila Tester and her team for the buffet!  Thanks are due to Dave Abbott for ensuring all those 29 trophies are correctly engraved and distributed, to John Howes and the strong arm team for getting all the hardware for the stands up, moved for the Preview and replaced for the exhibition, to Carmel Lynch and all the contributors for the raffle and to Jeff Owen for the PDI presentation.  Jeff also looks after the database that supports the judging and selection process, for which we must also thank our judge this year, Alison Cawley, and the Selection Committee, chaired by Peter Rocchiccioli .  Peter once again has secured a superb range of sponsors, including that for our excellent print material from Aperture (and the special photobook discount you can find in the catalogue).  It was good to have Fotospeed with us on Friday and the London Camera Exchange on Saturday – and a special mention too for Mifsuds who also donated equipment for the raffle and for sale.

Thanks are also due to Cath Water for her work on publicity and of course to all the stewards over the week, and of course to all our exhibitors without whom the exhibition simply couldn’t happen!  Finally, many thanks to Wojtek Boden, this year’s Exhibition Secretary who brought all these disparate elements together and to our Vice Chair, Mike Hancock, who has been quietly working away supporting all our efforts.

The main feature on Friday was naturally the presentations, and it was good to see new members doing well, with Helenka Boden, George Sayer and Richard Ryder all achieving awards in their first year of membership.  Carmel Lynch was thrilled to receive her first cup, and Glyn Edmunds, despite all those letters after his name, was very pleased to receive his first cup for a digital image! Special mention however has to go to Lynne Owen who had a splendid evening, winning not only four cups but also receiving her CPAGB from the President of the SCPF, our own Peter Rocchiccioli who also presented Ross Laney with his DPAGB.  A fitting award was the Edmunds Cup to Graham Walls for services to the Club – very well deserved and a very popular award – as was the award of Photographer of the Year to Ann McDonald.  You can see the roll of honour and the photographs from the awards on the separate post, along with the award to Graham Sergeant of Life membership – another popular and well deserved award.

It was an excellent evening, so thank you  once again to everyone who made it so successful!

John Bradshaw, CCC President congratulates Graham Sergeant on the Life Membership announcement