From the Gironde estuary to Scotland by way of Bristol and many other stretches of water our latest presentation, by Jonathan Génevaux was a tour of just how much variety there is in photographing just one element; water.

A central pillar of his talk was that planning is the key to his image making, using a variety of on-line tools to get not just the obvious information like the weather forecast but websites that help with things like the direction of the sun (which may dictate when in the year a picture is taken), the height of tides etc. The length of the exposure was another consideration. Jonathan showed examples of longer exposures (measured in minutes) to shorter shutter speeds in the hundredths of a second. This was partly to show the difference in the result but also to demonstrate the different effects obtained.

By using a combination of hand held and drone-based cameras Jonathan showed a great range of images, all based around the subject of water.

Unusually, for a photographer, he also said that the gear [equipment] used is not the most important thing, it is the thought that goes into preparing the image that is more important.

In her summing-up, Society President, Helen Frost, said that “tonight shows the benefits of using Zoom for presentations like tonight’s. You gave us such a pleasant evening with beautiful photographs from France and the UK”. As one member added later, “the talk was excellent and useful to getting competition worthy landscape photographs”.

Next Monday we are back to Wyllyotts Theatre for the second print competition of the year. Titles need to be with the print secretary by the end of the weekend.

New members are always welcome to join us at Wyllyotts on most Monday evenings from 7:30pm.

Jonathan Génevaux