On Tuesday we kicked off the new season with our President’s address. This was entitled, Why Photograph Anything? Idse presented an informative and entertaining talk, which can be summed up as "take photographs because you enjoy them and look for beauty in the image".
As members appreciate the quality of Idse’s photography and talks, the session was attended by in excess or 30 members in the pub, and over 25 on-line. Idse had spent some time considering how he would give this talk and this involved an extensive look at his back catalogue going back a large number of years, (Indeed when Idse said he couldn’t remember when he took one image, David Brown reminded him it had been in a competition in 2011 so it was quite old!).
In reviewing his images Idse was struck by how much he enjoyed a talk by David Ward and had previously bought David’s book, Landscape Beyond. Idse took the themes within David’s book and examined how his own images, to an extent, mirrored David’s way of working and especially how beauty could be discerned in a myriad of different ways. Idse presented a vast catalogue of work, not just landscape as implied in the title. Idse, as we know, is fascinated by clouds, by nature, and by looking for patterns within images. He showed some excellent images, one in particular, yellow seaweed against a dark background, I thought was amazing and could easily have stood to being blown up poster size and displayed in a gallery.
As a contrast, Idse showed some images taken on a landscape workshop where they were constrained to taking black and white images. It was amazing how a traditional landscape, which you would think depended upon colour, could be so striking in monochrome. Of course, a lot of this was due to Idse’s control of light and contrast. Idse had, as a coincidence been to some of the views in David’s book and taken images from almost exactly the same spot. Although David is an award winning photographer Idse’s images stood comparison and in my opinion, surpassed some of David’s.
An excellent start to the new season with an exciting programme to follow.