AV News 187 - February 2012
Around The Clubs
RPS Northern AV Group
Howard Bagshaw ARPS MPAGB
It was dark at 6:00am when we set off for Snods Edge on Saturday 31st
October. We hadn’t been before, so this was going to be a new experience for
us, fortunately our satnav, Emily, knew where to take us. Three and half hours
and 200 miles later, we arrived to a great welcome (thank you Bill Barr) and a
welcome cup of coffee.
The arrangements for the day were familiar, attendees’ sequences followed
by the guest lecturers, with refreshments and chat inserted at regular intervals.
There were seven attendees sequences, none of which we had seen before.
'The Time Traveller' by Peter Appleton was a very well crafted sequence about
Beamish museum, while there were two ‘funnies’ which everyone appreciated,
'Mary' by Jim McCormick and 'Now for something different' by Geoff Burdis.
Geoff’s wife Val showed 'Harlow Carr', a gentle sequence about the RHS
gardens. Laurie Little (and family) had produced a comprehensive sequence
about the 'Orkney' islands, well narrated in a local accent. The northern
outreaches were also well depicted in Chris Bates’ 'Peat for the Fires', while we
went to northern Brittany for Jeff Evan’s 'Ile de Brehet'. Constructive comments
were made on each sequence by guest lecturers and members of the audience.
Our first guest speaker of the day was Laurie
Ramsay, from Leeds AV group and a master
of natural history photography. He talked
about his life in this area of photography and
showed pictures, some from his teenage
years through to some of his latest.
Interspersed with his talk, he showed a
number of AV sequences which he had made
in collaboration with friends from the Leeds
group. Carole and I thought that these were
probably the best natural history AVs we had
seen.
After an excellent lunch we had an afternoon of delight from Eddie Spence,
(right) also of course from the Leeds AV group. Somehow he managed to distil
15 years of AV experience into 3 hours. We
saw his earliest AVs and his most recent. We
were enchanted by a humorous visit to
Tenerife and moved by the portrayal of a
death in the family. However, Eddie is a
master of the biographical sequence, so we all
marvelled at the self confidence of Dali, so
well portrayed by Eddie. at the fragility of Van
Gogh, at the amorous adventures of Puccini
and the tempestuous life of the dancer,
Isadora Duncan.
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