Thursday 5th January

As we reconvene, it’s with all very best wishes for the New Year and the hope that everyone enjoyed Christmas.  Unfortunately, the holiday season was very unkind to some of our Members with Roger Pagram hospitalised with gall stones (now on the road to recovery), while David Harris fell from a step ladder and has broken his pelvis.  David is now home, but will be grounded for some long-time.  Fortunately for us, he can carry out most of his Treasurer duties while he convalesces with ‘goffers’ acting as his legs.  We all send good wishes to David and to Diana for a swift recovery.

Sadly, our indomitable President, Jeanne Bevis, also fell before Christmas and broke her hip. Jeanne is now out of intensive care following an operation to repair the break, but at nearly 98 this is no simple matter and Jeanne is expected to go into a nursing home on leaving hospital.  All best wishes to Jeanne and her family as well.

We like to give all our speakers and visitors a warm welcome to the Club and were particularly challenged to do that last night with the heating in the big hall out of action.  It was coats, hats and gloves on for the first session of the New Year, but otherwise our good friend, Ken Scott got us off to a flying start.  Ken was with us to judge the 5th Round of the Southern Counties Photographic Federation First Division Print League competition. This comprises the eight Clubs in the First League submitting eight images (selected for Chichester Camera Club by our Selection Committee) which are then judged by eight different judges, with each round hosted by one of the participating Clubs.

Ken is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, a key member of the Sussex Photographic Federation and an active member of Steyning Camera Club.  He is best known for his landscape photography, is a popular speaker and judge, and also runs workshops.  He has a particular interest in coaching judges and in judging standards, which was evident in the masterclass of judging we had the pleasure to see last night.

 As Peter Rocchiccioli said in his vote of thanks, Ken has a superb skill in analysing images, provides an eloquent commentary and justifies his scoring to his comments.  There’s always much to learn from watching Ken appraise a photograph.  

Thanks are also due to Ann McDonald and Margret Preece for their usual efficient print handling to facilitate the evening and especial thanks to Jeff Owen (assisted he tells me by Lynne) for taking all 64 prints home over the Christmas period and photocopying them for projection so the audience could see better.  The Club did pretty well too, maintaining our third place position – you can find the SCPF League tables on the SCPF website and they will be entered on the SCPF news pages here in due course.

Margret was also able to tell us our Christmas card collection for the Snowdrop Trust raised £152 this year – thanks to everyone who contributed.

David Harris’s Ghost Host After P Burke won the Edleston Trophy for Most Original Advanced Print in last year’s Annual Exhibition.