Inspiring

Hi All

Well, the first presentation of the 2008/9 CCC season got off to a cracking start, with a session from octagenarian and FRPS Vic Attfield.

I had posted on our blog a selection of his images, but the ones he went through in the 90 min presentation were even better, and accompanied by excellent humourous commentary with a fair peppering of advice and tips. He's only now thinking about converting to digital, so all of these were taken with a variety of manual SLR cameras and printed in his own darkroom. A real masterpiece of work, so much so that both G and I bought his retrospective book "Looking", which was published a few years back.

He's giving up judging and (presumably) external presenting, since he indicated this would be his first and last time presenting to this club. A real shame, but very very pleased to have seen it, and to have a lasting and inspirational memento of the evening and his work, since it seems he doesn't have a website...I also had a nice chat with him in the interval, getting some great encouragement when I said I was becoming more of a mono fan.

This was been, for me, the best presentation so far in my 2 full seasons at CCC. I know I missed a couple that Gareth raved about in similar fashion (and one that he also purchased books for us both [Hugh Milson]), but this one was worth the money of the subscription to CCC for the remainder of the season. Being this good on the first meeting of 08/09 may mean that it's all (relatively) down hill from here on, but I hope the committee have improved the speakers, since there were quite a few duffers last year. So far, so good. 10/10.

Ivan