Members; evenings are an opportunity for us to see the wider range of photographic activities that our members engage in. On this occasion a quarter of members produced a very interesting and well appreciated group of projects.
Dean Sephton had worked on photographing the journey narrated by Hilaire Belloc, a Sussex author, in his book The Four Men. These four were caricatures of Belloc imagining a journey over five days across the breadth of Sussex from Robertsbridge in the east to Harting in the west. They visited 15 pubs and gathered tales of Sussex life. Dean photographed all 15 pubs and used them in a display at an exhibition and dramatic reading of Belloc's book at the Sullington Tithe Barn in October 2023. An audio-visual display of the river Arun, which features in the book was also shown. He has produced a "Zine", Rivers, Downs and Tales which is available as a flick book on his website.
A future project was canvassed by George Reekie. He was seeking to take members' photography to a new level by trying to encourage participation in PAGB distinctions, salons, national and international competitions. These can be distinguished from the customary club competitions and RPS distinctions because of the way they are judged. Individual images are displayed for 5 seconds before three judges and a score of 2 to 5 is given. He illustrated the process by showing 10 images at 5 second intervals and invited the members to privately judge them on the given scale. Members were then invited to express their interest in taking the project forward.
Janet Brown has a drone and so taking aerial photographs is her project. She explained the licensing of under 250 gram machines and then showed some audio-visuals of her recent usage in inspecting her roof and the neighbour's garden, viewing the flooding on the Arun and the works on Church Hill in Pulborough as well as her monitoring of the works on the West Chiltington Road to repair a collapsed culvert. In her neighbour's garden was a monkey puzzle tree that viewed from the air displayed an interesting pattern which surprised the members. She then went on to show the felling of the tree after it became diseased. In a final flurry Janet flew her drone for a few seconds.
Finally Liz Barber illustrated her project to photograph all the churches in the Rape of Bramber. Rape is a medieval administrative area in Sussex. She had hoped to photograph all the churches with a common perspective but the lie of the land and ubiquitous yew trees frustrated that intention. Most of the views were external but many of the churches have very interesting interiors. The project is not quite complete and Liz hopes to be able to extend it into one of the other rapes in Sussex.