​Those ​members present enjoyed a potpourri of John Calliste’s recent images from India, guidance on preparation of prints -and DPIs- for EAF external competitions from Mike Kingston -our Secretary, and a ‘How did you do that?’ session in which the highest scorers from our last competition talked about their images.

John showed us a careful selection from the many images he shot in and around Dehli, Agra, Jaipur and Mumbai on his recent month-long trip -with his girlfriend- in northern India. He shared with us the challenges of making "unique" images in these much-photographed locations and we all recognised his total absorption in making pictures which kept his girlfriend waiting!

Mike summarised the Committee's frustrations with trying to fulfil the mandate to resume entering the East Anglia Federation [EAF -the Federation to which CoL&CPS belongs] competitions given by members at the 2017 AGM. With reference to some of the prints retained for entering, he reiterated the presentation standards with which our high-scoring images -whether print or DPI- need to comply if we are to enter such external competitions. 

The evening finished with John Murray, Cathryn Rees, Natalie Robinson, John Wilder, Alan Larsen, Terry Fallis, Kate Shortland and Robert Wilkinson, whose images scored 19 or 20 in our most recent competition, recounting how they selected and processed their images; Hilary Barton and Chris Jepson spoke for Richard Eyers and Keith Cavanagh who were unable to be at the meeting. We haven't done this type of post-competition feedback before and it turned out to be a useful -and enjoyable- exercise which we plan to repeat. 

We met Sisi Burn when she was busy taking photos at Alan Ainsworth’s exhibition of jazz photography and were delighted when she accepted our invitation to speak to CoL&CPS. Our audience consisted of those members who were not distracted by the World Cup, film premieres, the extreme heat or any other valid excuses. And for those present, it was a real treat: Sisi had put together a great presentation with images from all stages of her photographic journey. She had taken this opportunity to look back reflectively at her whole career, an experience she said was actually enjoyable and useful to her and was fascinating and inspirational for us.
Her first passion as a teenager was music and so during her A level photography course she started to make images of musicians and music events. She worked in film, in black and white, and her creativity and willingness to experiment was evident in the earliest of her work. She studied documentary photography at Newport where she was encouraged to combine storytelling in the context of her interest in the music scene. Her first published image was on the cover of the Guardian Careers supplement and subsequently she has had many of her images in the arts and culture pages of national newspapers when they were still providing such space. She works sometimes on commissions but often free-lancing, sending in her images of musical events, from jazz, classical, opera and baroque music, to editors. 

In talking about the images she was showing us, Sisi illustrated how confidently she has moved through from film to digital, from black and white to colour, from portraits of individual musicians to group portraits and performance shots in small and large venues. She has used a range of cameras, from film Leicas with monopod, to her current favourite, the much lighter Olympus OM-D Mark II. She particularly likes to use a silent shutter to free up shooting during a performance. Currently, Sisi is training to become an arts counsellor and expects to use photography as part of her work. Thank you for such an interesting evening, Sisi.

We used the break to acknowledge Jemma Ayre’s success in our June Flickr PotW competition by awarding her the prestigious Tiger Trophy. Her beautiful image of a stained glass window and its projection was her entry to ‘A splash of colour’. She has chosen as her theme for July, ‘Old and New or Young and Old’ - maybe a challenge for our August 7th walk and shoot?

Thanks to Kanu Joshi for the photos in this report.