THURSDAY 15 APRIL 2021
Clive Tanner ARPS FRPS MPAGB APAGB – ‘Divine Light and Beyond’
Our last speaker for the current season was Clive Tanner ARPS FRPS MPAGB APAGB and if it hadn’t been for the covid-19 restrictions and Zoom, it is highly unlikely, as he lives in Kent, that he would ever have had the opportunity to give us his talk. Some of the photographs to accompany his presentation ‘Divine Light and Beyond’ were digital images of the print panels he had submitted to the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) to gain the highest levels of merit within both associations.
The evening began with his ARPS panel which had originally been taken on large format slide and were a culmination of his visits to several cathedrals in and around Great Britain. The images depicted not only the architecture of the buildings, but also the stone and wooden shrines and sculptures that were within them. He followed this with the twenty monochrome images which formed the panel for his FRPS. Every image we saw, whether it be a large architectural view, a stained glass window or plain simple item, they all had a three dimensional feel to them and from front to back they were all ‘pin sharp’, the detail and depth of field that Clive managed to capture is incredible. During lockdown, Clive said he had revisited both panels and had made them into a book. The second half of Clive’s presentation, although not Cathedrals nor Abbeys, was on a very similar theme and a subject he is passionate about taking photographs of – Churches and in particular The Churches of Romney Marsh. Both monochrome and colour images showed internal and external shots of numerous churches and chapels in Kent. Each photograph was accompanied by a concise summary of the Church and its contents, even down to the reason for the pink pews in St Clement’s Church in Old Romney.
As an avid photographer, Clive has achieved the highest distinctions possible, but even so he says that you can make a picture out of anything, it doesn’t necessarily have to be great it just has to be beautiful.