AV News Magazine | Page 22

AV News 175 - February 2009 RPS INTERNATIONAL AV FESTIVAL 2008 Jake Pursey Hello my name is Jake Pursey and I'm 13 years old (well, 14 in January). I am a member of the Essex A.V. Group at Raleigh. I got interested in photography and audio-visual from my Grandad. As you all probably know my Grandad is Mike Woolnough. I have been doing AV for about 18 months. I have a Panasonic Lumix camera which I bought last year and have been very happy with it. So far I have achieved 7 Highly Commended and 1 Third Place certificates for my AV's. These were from the AV Group, and IRIS International. I also won a photo competition for taking various pictures of my home town Witham. I also appeared in three different newspapers as I was the youngest winner and entrant and I had to have my photo done with the oldest winner of the competition who was 82. I like taking photographs of all kinds. My Grandad asked if I would like to come with him and Viv to the 18th International Audio-Visual Festival weekend in a college in Cirencester. I had a think about going, I was a bit worried but I went because I knew I would know loads of people. There were lots of people from different countries that were very nice and kind as well, even though I had never met them before. I had the Friday off school and my Grandad and Viv took me there along with our Dutch friend Pieter Van Gent. When we got there we had the first session that afternoon which had some brilliant sequences in! I used a scoring system so I could remember which ones I liked. XXX = Really Good; XX = Good; X = OK; and / = Rubbish I gave "Red Shoes" by David and Carol Gillow XXX I liked the story about the lady and wanting red shoes and I liked the effect of black and white and the shoes and bag being in red. And after each session you had to do an audience vote of what one you liked best, I voted for "Red Shoes". Then after that we went back to our rooms got ready for dinner. One of the best bits of that day was being in the bar!! The President of the Royal Photographic Society, Dr Barry Senior HonFRPS was there as well and I got my photo taken with him which I thought would never happen, because Grandad has never had one taken with him, so I'm the lucky one! On the next day, Saturday, breakfast was delicious, egg on toast, that's what I like. Today there were two sessions with one break in each session, so I did get a chance to meet new people and grab a biscuit! I liked "The Minstral Boy" by Len Deeley and "Talbot House" by Linda and Edgar Gibbs. Of course the best sequence in this session was "A12 Art" (that's my sequence! Ha ha ha!) Some of the images are shown on P21. Page 20