Martin gave us a talk on last year’s 'One a Week’ project which a number of us took part in during 2013. The idea is that you are given a new topic each week and you must take at least one image of the subject during that week, which you then upload to the Flickr site. Once there, your fellow members of the group can tell you what they think of your efforts. If you get no comments, as happened with most of my shots, you can take it that nobody thinks them worthy of comment! Not good, but in my case predictable.
Martin explained the whole 2013 challenge to everyone and then randomly showed us an example of each topic as taken by those partaking from each week. He had produced little prints of all 52 of his images from last year, and Liz brought the prints that had been on show at the Storrington library for our Christmas exhibition, some of which were also from the project.
After the break, Chris West, Vice Chairman and generally OK chap, gave us a show illustrating two trips that he had made to Napal in 2007 and 2008. Paul Hayward had been going to give us a show of one of his trips, but sadly was taken ill and had to step down. Chris’s show was very well presented and it was hard to believe that he had got it all together at very short notice.
His first visit was on a SAGA holiday, which he went on with his Wife, hoping to see Bengal tigers. You travel in Nepal on two feet, in a Land Rover, in a boat or on an elephant which is what they were doing when they did indeed see a Bengal Tiger, which is very rare and scarce. This male was in an area of long grasses so it was difficult to get a clear shot of the beast; however, Chris managed to get a couple of good images, not easy from atop an elephant I am thinking. They also saw single-horned Rhinos which are another rare species, but in Chris's words,"they saw loads of them"
During this trip, when the weather could have been better, Chris fell in love with Nepal and the following year he started to ask several of his buddies whether they would like to accompany him back for a trekking holiday. The phone remained dead for a while and then one by one his friends took up the challenge and eight men arrived and joined by two guides the trek began.
Chris showed us many shots of the mountains and valleys along and up and down which they trekked and I must say they must all have been very fit indeed. On this trip the weather was very good indeed. One of the guides always carried a towel - the same one throughout - which he insisted they ALL used EVERY time they had to wash their hands and which must have been quite revolting by the end of the trip.
We saw some very good images during the whole evening and it was very entertaining. Thank you Martin and Chris.