AV News 186 - November 2011
It was a running joke that he always kept a back-up supply of bands in his
pocket in case of a failure during the show. This unlikely contraption
produced the smoothest dissolves I have ever seen, quite different in
character from a bulb-dimming system. Coupled with John's beautiful
photography, the effect could be little short of magical.
John was in his element with nature and landscape subjects, as
exemplified by the superb mountain pictures in 'The Primal Wonders', an
illustration of a poem by Nancy Newhall; "And you shall need the tongues of
angels to tell what you have seen."
Perhaps his best known
sequence and certainly the
one which made the
greatest impression on me,
was 'Pictures for Finlandia',
a visual interpretation of the
Sibelius tone poem, which
won first prize in the RPS
International AV Festival in
1977.
It was shown at the AV
Group's 25th Anniversary
weekend in Sheffield in 2002
thanks to the good offices of
Sir George Pollock.
This was almost certainly
the last time one of John's
sequences was seen in
public.
Happily, it is to be included
in the ongoing RPS AV
Archive at the National
Media Museum in Bradford.
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