The meeting was introduced by our chair, Roger Moore who congratulated John Sampson, Karen Frenkel and Steve Elliot as they had the highest numbers of votes from the public whilst the clubs print exhibition was on display at Hope and Bradwell churches. Roger also put out a request for cakes and/or raffle prizes for the clubs coffee morning at Hope Old School on September 6th. Help on the morning of the event would be most welcome as we intend to put up the print exhibition for one last viewing. If you can help then please contact Margaret Drabble.
Two final notices: the display storage bags have been mended after a recent mouse attack and the theme for this years photography exhibition is “Windswept and Interesting”.
Roger was then able to introduce Marion New, seen in the image above sat to the left of Keith and to his right in the photo alongside this paragraph. Her husband Colin was a wonderful photographer who has recently died and Marion agreed to give the presentation in his memory. The family, seen with Keith in the photo to the left, had all come along to support her and it must be said that she did an outstanding job. Marion and Colin had been on an Arctic Cruise in 2023 which resulted in the creation of the evenings presentation.
Colin New was a member of the Sheffield Photographic Society and also the London Salon. If you wish to read a most moving tribute to Colin then you can find it on the website of the salon.
https://thelondonsalon.org/colin-new-tribute/
Colin was a talented photographer and former head teacher who loved images and the way they could be used to tell a story. He had no fondness for competitions or awards and did not seek them out despite his amazing talent.
The photographs shown here are only to give a flavour of his ability and we thank both him and Marion for the opportunity to see this wonderful presentation. The “Arctic Journey” was the result of a rather different cruise to those advertised in many glossy magazines. Muck boots and life jackets were the key items on the “dress code” as the trips offshore were by Zodiac boat and quite likely to involve sand and seawater.
The majority of the cruise was lucky with the weather and neither fog, mist or wild seas appear to have troubled them until toward the end of their tour. The map shows the eastern side of Greenland where the delights of Scoresby sound featured in the photos. Further south, Iceland was on the itinerary and the northern highlights were up around Svalbard. Marion told us a little about the Research Station on Svalbard at 79 degrees North with an average winter temperature of -140C.
There were so many wonderful photos, beginning with the cliffs below the map, it was very difficult to look away from the screen to make some notes!
Colin was particularly fond of the cliffs but also the many colours both of the landscape, the flowers and the light. Glaciers featured in several images and there were naturally plenty of icebergs. A shipwreck was a surprising feature on one of the trips on shore and the party were told in no uncertain terms not to touch and that the only things to take were photographs.
At one point as they were ashore and wandering along the beach an alert came from one of the lookouts that a polar bear had been sighted. The captain ordered all the party to get back on the zodiac and head back to the SS Maud. Unfortunately Colin could only get a distant photo of the bear as he would have needed a very long lens indeed to get an image that filled the frame. Marion did tell us that in an effort to keep his back from becoming more of a problem, Colin had swapped to a micro four thirds system with a small selection of lenses that helped reduce the weight of the kit. (Many of you will be aware of the problem and some may have already made the same changes.)
Reindeer, Hunters, an Amundsen bust as well as many sunsets were all a big part of the presentation and some of the images were particularly pleasing to Colin, and it must be said that club members greatly appreciated those photos and many more.
Many thanks to Colin for a wonderful set of images and to Marion for delivering the presentation in her lovely relaxed style. It was a great evening and one can only wish that a web page could do justice to the quality of the photographs. Never the less thankyou Marion and all the family for their support.