THURSDAY 26th NOVEMBER
BRIAN NORTHMORE – ‘IN DISCUSSION’
If there is one good thing that has come out of us having to hold our meetings via Zoom, it’s the fact that we can invite speakers from all over the country to speak to us, ordinarily distance dictates who can be invited. Our latest speaker Brian Northmore lives and works in the Plymouth area and was able to fill in a gap in our programme at short notice to give his talk ‘In Discussion’. It was a generic talk covering all aspects of photography and it displayed a full range of his photographic interests and expertise. Although Brian usually encourages audience participation, that aspect of his talk is quite difficult over Zoom. He was, however, more than happy to answer any questions put to him during the break and at the end of the evening.
He began by explaining how his interest in photography began and with a grandfather and father both owning and using film cameras it was probably inevitable that Brian would take up the same hobby at some point in time. His preferred photographic genre is monochrome landscape but he did show us other images including aircraft at air shows, horses in point-to-point competitions and creative pictures achieved by ‘in camera movement’.
He explained that he enjoys taking landscapes as it allows him to get outdoors, away from the trials of life, losing himself in planning the composition and timing of his images. He has patience in ‘buckets full’ to keep returning to the same place, day after day, until he captures the exact image he set out to get. He demonstrated, how by moving slightly, changing the focal point of an image or the changing light, can make the same view look so different. Whilst showing stunning images from Dorset, The Lake District and Cornwall, to name but a few places, Brian told the us what equipment and software he had used to achieve that piece of artwork. To conclude the evening he ran a short audio-visual of pictures needing no explanation at all.