AV News 187 - February 2012
Belated Obituary for Iain Lang 1940 - 2009
Bill Barr
I am sure that many of you reading this came across in past years, a
Scotsman called Iain Lang. His name cropped up at the National Audio
Visual Championships at Sutton Bonington in September 2011 after the
viewing of Richard Brown's sequence, 'The man who saw the Future', which
was first overall and winner of the championships. This told the story of John
Logie Baird and the credits at the end of the sequence named Iain Lang as
narrator.
Geoff Noxon, whom I was sitting next to, said "I wonder where he is now".
Well I'm from North of the Border also and I knew an Iain Lang, so I spoke to
Richard Brown at the next tea break to ascertain if there was a chance that
this was the same person and it turned out it was. Richard then explained that
he had, had the idea many years ago, about twenty in fact, to make a
sequence on John Logie Baird and had got Iain Lang to record the voiceover
for him, but he had not been in touch or heard from Iain for some time.
What information I had at this point was not very much, but I could tell
Richard that Iain had died approximately a couple years ago. This came as
a shock to Richard and Jill Bunting who was standing with us having a cup
of tea. Although Iain was quite well known in AV circles, no one had heard
about his death so nothing had appeared in AV News. Jill suggested that if I
could obtain some more information about him it could then be published in
the magazine. The following is an all too brief and belated Obituary to Iain.
Iain lived in Bishopton, Renfrewshire and he joined the Scottish Photographic
Federation (SPF) Executive Committee in 1991 as their Bulletin Editor,
holding the post for a number of years. He also set up the SPF website in
1995 and took on the roll as Webmaster. Iain could see the potential of the
internet and the value of a website to the Federation and put a lot of time and
effort into its creation. During and before this time, he was heavily involved in
the AV scene in Scotland organising the 2000 AV workshop in Edinburgh
while continuing to write many articles on AV and photography in general for
the Bulletin.
Iain travelled down from Scotland, just as I do, to attend AV days and
competitions, I do believe he did the journey by motorcycle. He got to know
a few of the AV workers, such as Richard Brown and Colin Balls and worked
with both of them on sequences. Colin and Richard have kindly added their
own memories of Iain at the end of this report.
Those of you who knew him well, will maybe recall him as a being a bit
controversial from time to time and this led to a parting of the ways from the
SPF in 2000.
After a long illness he died in November 2009 at the Accord Hospice in
Renfrew near Glasgow. Iain never married, he was a bachelor all his days
and left no immediate family. The SPF were unaware of his illness until his
nephew contacted the Executive Committee after his uncle's death.
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