On the Road Again with the RPS Travel and AV Groups

What a great new venture when the RPS Travel and AV Groups came together for a joint event on Saturday 15th of October! It is evident that AV workers have much to learn from travel photographers and vice versa. We hope we can keep this productive relationship alive. Several members of the AV Group attended the event. Laura Morgan LRPS from the Travel Group shares her impressions of the weekend.

Iceland, India, Romania, London and Jerusalem, sadly not my 2023 travel itinerary, rather the visually exciting destinations we were introduced to at the Travel Group’s “On the Road Again” weekend at Aston Conference Centre in Birmingham. The committee chose an excellent venue; the programme was varied and interesting and the speakers inspiring.

Dr Peter Walmsley, member of the Travel Group and an RPS trustee, lived and worked in Delhi for two years and took full advantage, visiting and photographing over 40 different locations across the country. A sense of place is important in Travel Photography as Janey Devine made clear in her session about preparing for A and F panels and Peter certainly illustrated this. Images of people at home, work and following religious practice and explorations of diverse landscapes gave us a real sense of the India he encountered. Using local xers to facilitate his interactions he met people from all walks of life. He also explained his personal attitude to risk taking in the eld and how how he approaches people when photographing them.

How to display and share our travel photography in new ways is a challenge and Alastair Taylor of the RPS AV Group gave us insight into how we could combine still images with music, narration and video to create different experiences for the viewer. Ranging from Photo Harmony (pairing images with appropriate music) to more complex documentaries he demonstrated how our images could be made even more exciting. He showed many examples and “Dark Tourism” was a particularly affecting piece. Alastair will be running online workshops about the skills and techniques required and encouraged travel group members to get involved.

We saw images from two recent group trips to Iceland, some stunning landscapes were created by the members and there were also images of the groups in action as well as photographs of the the people they met. The presentation showed how much fun Travel Group trips are and we heard how supportive everyone is of each other. Two are planned for next year one is to Vietnam and one to Provence. I believe they are selling fast!

I’m planning to work on an A panel so advice from Janey Devine (who is on the Travel Distinctions Panel) about the process and recent changes thereto was very useful. She made clear the challenge of moving from L to A and then the even bigger step up to F. Examples of successful A panels from Kath Phillips and Justin Cliffe were on display and they each described how they’d approached the task, both highlighting how useful - if not essentialattending assessments and seeking one-to-one reviews are in nalising a panel. Their personal experiences of creating a Statement of Intent and how it might evolve over time was echoed by Janey in her talk. I liked too how they all emphasised that while there is a dened process and specic criteria to follow, photographers should remain true to themselves.

The standard of work required for a successful F panel was evident in Paul Hassell’s images of his visits to rural Romania. I’ve travelled there and could see how well he connected with the villagers and families he met and was lucky to win in the rafe one of his landscapes from the trips. Whereas panels may take many visits and even years to develop, Paul was there only twice and like Peter explained how useful having a local guide is.

The popular “Bring a Print” competition displayed a diverse range of subjects and places and the standard was, as always, very high. Judy Ford’s superb winning image of a Romanian woman was a beautifully observed environmental portrait with a touch of humour and a deserved winner.

We had plenty time to socialise and took full advantage of sharing stories and ideas at the bar and over dinner. I met some new friends and had a really wonderful weekend. I won’t say much about Sunday’s photo-walks as they will be covered elsewhere but I was genuinely inspired and excited by Stewart Walls’ ideas. His Ginko Walk involving thoughtful engagement with the environment and subject matter before making an image and then pairing it with a piece of Haiku is something I have taken away and will put into practice.

Many thanks to Kath and the team for a really well organised and entertaining weekend.

Which is better?

Early Bird or Tail -End Charlie ...

Back in the 1980s it became a bit of a standing joke that Norman Veale, who enjoyed great success in festivals at that time, always seemed to have his entry shown in the last session of any event. So much so that some people started referring to it as the “Norman Veale session”. Later on, when this trend was less noticeable, the joke was that the quality of Norman’s work was obviously in decline because he could no longer get into his own session! There was a certain amount of friendly banter about people wanting their entry to be shown as late as possible because they thought it gave them a better chance of winning a prize.

In fact, there is a good basis in psychological research to suggest that having your sequence shown later in the programme is an advantage. The phenomenon known as recency bias indicates that things experienced towards the end of a series tend to be remembered more favourably afterwards.

For years I’ve been threatening to compile an analysis to see whether there really is any evidence of recency bias in major AV competitions. Lockdown boredom nally prompted me to do it. Looking through past programmes for the two major RPS festivals I charted in which session the winning sequence had been shown.

In the 24 International AV Festivals held, the top sequence was shown during the nal session nine times. Including, appropriately enough, Norman’s own winner in 1984. This is a considerably better performance than pure chance would give. Interestingly, on two occasions the winner was the very last sequence to be shown. By contrast, only two winning entries have ever emerged from the rst session, in 1976 and 1990. So on that evidence you might think that perhaps the Norman Veale effect is real.

But before you start lobbying the organisers to get your entry placed later in the programme, let’s look at the same results from the National AV Championships. In the 22 events held, the top sequence has come from the last session only twice, in 1983 and 2013. Whereas four of the winners have been shown in session one.

Of course, all of this is just a bit of fun. For one thing, particularly in the Nationals, the nal session has sometimes had fewer sequences than the others, which would have to be taken into account in a proper statistical analysis. Also, there’s an underlying assumption that the positioning of the sequences is random, which of course it isn’t. Working out the running order for a festival is a notoriously tricky undertaking. It’s possible that the organisers will have a tendency, consciously or otherwise, to place what they perceive as the lower or higher quality entries in certain positions in the programme and there’s no way of knowing what those biases might be. Even then there’s no guarantee that the jury’s view of which are the better sequences will be the same.

As it happens, my own RPS International winner in 2018 was shown in the second session out of seven. So perhaps I won’t worry too much in future if I open my programme at an event and see that I’m on early!

Pictured Left: Richard holds the refurbished board showing winners of the International Audio Visual Festival.

Below: Richard’s Wilkinson Cameras Pro Master Kit won at the 2022 NAVC

An interview with Jenny Gee

LRPS DPAGB/AV and Malcolm

Gee ARPS DPAGB/AV

Just like so many other teenagers growing up in the early 1960s, we both ‘inherited’ simple B&W lm cameras from our fathers, and took ‘snaps’ of friends and family. One of Malcolm’s neighbours lent him some back copies of the Amateur Photographer magazine, and a more serious interest in photography was sparked.

East Anglian Audio Visual Adventures

Malcolm bought an Olympus PenS 35mm half-frame camera, and took it with him when he went on a student exchange to Wageningen University in The Netherlands, to document the trip.

We still have the camera, but sadly the Agfa slides have discoloured beyond retrieval.

How did you get involved in AV. What was your rst experience and what was it that attracted you?

Our paths crossed in the mid 1960s, when Malcolm got a job in the same laboratory as Jenny. Working conditions were cramped, and Jenny offered to share her desk with him. Over lunch times, Malcolm showed her the images from his Dutch trip, and friendship developed and we started to go out together. He booked tickets for a Kodak Road Show in Reading Town Hall, hosted by Alfred Gregory, the mountaineer and lead photographer on the successful conquest of Mount Everest in 1953. This early Kodak audio-visual presentation featured two manually operated and synchronised Aldis 1000 slide projectors, and hi- quality stereo sound.

Needless to say both of us were impressed and inspired, and thought how great it would be to try and emulate what we had seen using our own images. Our friendship, as we discovered common interests, blossomed into romance, so when Malcolm moved to Cambridge, Jenny joined him for weekends, staying in a spare attic bedroom in his digs, and exploring and photographing the city together. On one rather special Saturday we got engaged. Eighteen months later, the Cambridge laboratory was relocated to Norwich, we were married, and Jenny got a job there too.

Our sequence, Cambridge Remembered, made over forty-ve years later using scans of the original half-frame slides, tells the story!

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

Our photography has always been focussed on AV production, and although we had very little spare time during our working lives, we jotted down ideas for potential sequences and continually added to our ever-expanding library of slides. In the late 1970s, we started to attend the Audio Visual Show, held annually at the Wembley Conference Centre. All the professional producers were present, companies like Sarner Audio Visual, Kodak and Hasselblad. The sequences we saw there made a lasting impression on us, and reinforced our determination to get seriously into AV production as soon as time allowed.

Government cut backs in the late 1980s resulted in the group in which Malcolm worked being shut down, and he was made redundant. He decided to do a two year full time OND course in Design Photography, and subsequently set up his own small business, mainly doing tourism, stock photography and working for building rms recording progress at their sites, both on the ground and from the air. Jenny meanwhile continued at the Institute of Food Research, and we both retired in the mid 2000s. However, with parents becoming more and more dependent on us, spare time was still at a premium until several years later, when they had sadly passed on. Even now, there are never enough hours in a day, but digital AV production has certainly eased things considerably, and our Kodak Carousel projectors, Tandberg 3-track tape recorder and Imatronic dissolve unit have been consigned to a cupboard.

Do you think that living where you do, on the edge of the country as it were, this inuences your working?

Norfolk has been our home for over half a century, and living just north west of Norwich, we’re very fortunate in having some beautiful and varied scenery, like the Broads National Park and the North Norfolk Coast, on our doorstep. The hours we’ve spent exploring the area and it’s traditions have provided the stories behind several of our sequences, and there are still more to tell! We got to know Eric, the marsh man, well over many years, resulting in our AV Eric all about his very traditional way of life in the northern Norfolk Broads. Delving more into the history of How Hill, where he worked, led to a recent sequence about the largest thatched roofed house in the area (A Breath of Fresh Air), and an opportunity to sail in a Norfolk Wherry led to another (The Old Fashioned Way).

This part of the country was also home to large numbers of British and American servicemen in WW2, and is dotted with remnants of airelds. Nowadays only a few active air bases remain, but up until twenty years ago summer air shows were quite common, and our love of aviation took us to many to photograph the spectacular displays. The Red Arrows often graced these shows and we took every opportunity to gather images with a sequence in mind. Tickets to a ‘Families Day’ at RAF Coltishall in May 1979 provided a perfect opportunity to get the ground shots and sound recordings we needed and Vintage Reds was the result.

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

Using every opportunity, outbound and return holiday ights, often from Norwich Airport, have provided some interesting aerial views to incorporate into our sequences (see AV News Issue 223). However, for Shifting Shores we had more specic ideas in mind, and a friend put us in touch with a pilot who kindly took us up for a ight in a suitable aircraft, looking down on the North Norfolk Coast. This required a lot of planning to get perfect shooting conditions, but after eight unsuccessful attempts, everything was in our favour, and we achieved what we wanted.

With our nearest AV Group down in Essex, we don’t have many other AV workers close by. However, some years ago, we were fortunate to meet and get to know Brian Harvey, who lives nearby. We’ve become good friends and often meet to have a cuppa and a chat, and show each other our latest productions. Both Brian and our friends down in Essex have been most helpful guiding us through the transition to digital production, and we’ve valued the very constructive criticism from Linda and Edgar Gibbs over the years. The late Howard Gregory was also a fountain of knowledge on sound matters, and we still have and use one of his microphone pre-ampliers. It’s said that ‘experience is the sum total of all your mistakes’, and particularly in the early days we made some terrible mistakes!

How would you describe your own style of AV making?

Documenting our experiences has always been our objective, trying to put some soul into what we produce, and communicate this to others with a personal touch. It can take the form of a straight documentary or a photo harmony sequence. For example, over the past twenty years we’ve spent a lot of time in the Swiss Bernese Oberland, in all seasons. At a very early stage we decided to produce a sequence about this small region in the spring; a project that took many years to complete given the ckleness of the mountain weather! We love this part of the world, and overall our experiences have so far generated two documentaries (In the Oberland and A Dream in White) and two photo harmonies (Alpine Seasons and Mountain Magic). We much enjoy travelling, and are always on the look out for possible sequences when visiting other European countries. We usually take a reasonably comprehensive photographic kit with us, now digital Olympus, and with all the planning and research holidays are more like expeditions! Unfortunately this is something that has sadly been on the back burner for a couple of years due to the pandemic. However, with a library of eight ling cabinet drawers, full of hanging wallets containing 35mm and 6x6cm colour slides, covering a wide variety of subjects, we have quite a comprehensive and historic collection to dip into!

We really enjoy watching good documentaries on TV; it’s taught us a lot about structure, content and pacing, as well as suitable background music at the right level. Some dramas, particularly those produced by other European countries aired on BBC4 and Channel 4 and subtitled, have very innovative introductions, which are both beautiful and intriguing to watch. You nd yourself thinking that’s a novel idea, and asking how did they do that?

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

As a "duo" who does what when it comes to AV making?

Initially we both had Olympus 35mm half-frame cameras, to economise on lm and processing costs! However, we soon found we were taking very similar shots, and in the mid-70s we decided to consolidate into a single Olympus 35mm full frame outt (the original OM-1 System), which is all still fully functional nearly 50 years later! In the days of lm, manual focus and exposure, when shooting for our Red Arrows sequence, teamwork was a distinct advantage. To capture the synchro-pair aircraft crossing, we made a remote electrical shutter release, so that Malcolm could pan the camera on a single aircraft with Jenny anticipating ‘the cross over’, and releasing the shutter at the critical moment! When photographing less mobile targets, the use of a tripod let both of us view potential images, and discuss the framing before releasing the shutter. Now, digital photography allows us to take shots, instantly check them on the rear camera screen, and re-take them if necessary. Image stabilisation and ability to crop means that the tripod comes out less frequently today, but it can be very useful at times.

Malcolm scans lm transparencies, using a Nikon scanner, and does the processing of RAW digital image les. The rest of the post-processing is done together. With an excellent quality scanner and using Topaz software, we’ve found it perfectly possible to integrate both lm and digital images into a sequence.

Our experiences at the Audio Visual Shows in London in the 1970s, led us to appreciate the importance of a very good sound soundtrack, especially as regards the choice of music and its power to create a mood. This is something that we have striven to achieve from the outset. Music is very much a part of our lives, and there’s always something playing when we’re at home, either on the radio or the hi-. We have very broad and similar tastes in music and, over sixty-four years, have built up an extensive library of about 1000 recordings, on LPs, CDs and on tapes and minidiscs. This provides us with a wealth of clips for soundtracks, and we are still adding to it! For instance, the soundtrack of our sequence Lifeline has 23 clips from 7 different musical sources, including less well known parts of a Bond movie score by John Barry, and some early electronic music by Delia Derbyshire, recorded from a radio broadcast of a BBC Promenade concert.

Script writing is initiated by Jenny, and generally goes through many, many iterations to rene it, and make it both easy to deliver and to listen to, before we are both satised. Our bedroom, at the back of the house, is converted into a mini studio to record the commentary, with Jenny at the microphone and Malcolm operating the equipment. It’s done in clips and constantly reviewed and repeated, until we are happy with the results. We prefer to record our own sound effects wherever possible, and this generally involves both of us; Jenny holding and aiming the microphone connected by a long cable to the recorder, operated by Malcolm. It can be quite challenging in order to get levels correct and avoid capturing extraneous sounds, but adds to the fun and satisfaction we get from doing it. As with the images, we’ve been gathering sound effects for sequences over many years. Being very aware of the importance of good quality sound, we initially invested in a Sony Professional Walkman stereo cassette tape recorder, and more recently graduated to a Sony PCM-M10 digital recorder.

Jenny prepares and edits the soundtrack in Adobe Audition software, combining the music clips and commentary, and adding sound effects where appropriate, to enhance the overall mood and atmosphere. This is then imported into PTE AV Studio with the images, to produce the nal sequence that blends all the elements together. Throughout the process, we are always bouncing ideas off one another as work proceeds, so from start to nish AV production is very much a joint effort.

All pictures in this article, except that on page 30, courtesy Jenny and Malcolm

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

Do you ever disagree?

Married for over 50 years we have always enjoyed doing everything together, and are very fortunate in sharing many interests. We’ve never had any problems as regards reaching a consensus on what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps the fact that we met one another through our jobs in the same scientic research group helps. That was the beginning of an enduring partnership.

Of your own AV productions, which ones are you proud of and why?

Our rst real success came with Cambridge Remembered, a personal experience very close to our hearts. It won us a Silver medal at the 2013 Great Northern Festival. The images, all shot on a 35mm half-frame camera in the late 1960s are a testimony to the quality of Kodak’s Kodachrome and Ektachrome lms and the lens on the Olympus Pen camera. Years later, a chance conversation in the car, on the way home from a weekend away, triggered the idea for a sequence using our library of slides from that period, and by the end of the journey we had a title and a basic structure for the AV!

‘Eric’, is another sequence that has done quite well, and means a lot to us.

More recently, we are very proud of Lifeline, all about the importance of the role of the Hurtigruten (express) ferry service along the northern Norwegian coast in winter. To date it’s been our most successful sequence, gaining us an award in 11 out of the 14 competitions in which it’s been entered, including a PAGB Bronze Medal, 2 Silver Medals and a FIAP Gold Medal.

Funnily enough, it really only happened by chance. A local travel company sent us an invitation in the post, to hear more about the Hurtigruten over afternoon tea in a Norwich store, it resulted in us making the trip to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary! We ew directly from Norwich to Tromso in the Arctic Circle in March 2018, to make the return journey on the MS ‘Nordlys’ to the North Cape and back. The idea of a sequence became immediately apparent, and we quickly gathered information after boarding the ship, and carefully planned pretty much every waking moment of the voyage to maximise opportunities for photography. It was extremely cold (minus 19C in Kirkenes at midday), and we couldn’t spend more than about 10-15 minutes out on deck at a time, before having to go inside and quickly warm up! We’re very glad we worked hard to document it so thoroughly. It turned out to be a unique and memorable experience, and others seem to enjoy sharing it with us through the power of AV.

Audio Visual Lives continued ...

What do you want to see in a great AV production?

To our minds a great AV production has rst and foremost really good original, creative and relevant photography. The accompanying soundtrack should be balanced, with appropriate music and/or sound effects at the right level, to complement the images. Smooth ow is very important, as is conveying a message to the viewer. Strong story telling can be entirely visual, or through an added commentary, but the latter needs to be delivered in a conversational style to engage the viewer. In a nutshell, all the elements should blend harmoniously, with attention to detail throughout, enhancing the overall experience.

Who is inspiring you at the moment? Of the current AV workers, who do you particularly like?

We have certainly learnt an awful lot from viewing other people’s productions. We’ve particularly enjoyed Graham Sergeant’s probing and gritty documentaries on social issues. A few years ago we got to know him quite well chatting over dinner, and his recent death is a sad loss to the AV community. Early on we were intrigued by some of the transitions Colin Balls managed to achieve, and we have always been very impressed by Keith Leedham’s work, especially the very slow creative dissolves and subtle soundtracks. Martin Fry has also made some beautiful documentaries and photo harmonies, which we’ve admired. Very recently, Derrick Holliday has produced a couple of memorable sequences in Reconciliation, all about Coventry Cathedral, and Playtime with it’s exquisite images of horses.

Since becoming much more involved in the AV scene over the past fourteen years, we’ve tried to participate in as many AV events as possible. We have learnt such a lot, and have made so many friends here in the UK and abroad, something that we value greatly especially living in an area of the country where AV workers are few and far between.

Dear Editor,

Congratulations on producing another superb AV News - it just seems to get better and better. Mensa Printers are doing a great job also.

I have only read three articles : your excellent interview with Keith Leedham, so many things I didn't know and a very interesting read and it has prompted me to phone him soon.

Richard’s Brown's Lore. It is great to revive it. Richard always writes an interesting thought provoking article.

And nally thank you for APT 22 and for contacting Carla and Francesca. I knew it would be an interesting story and I love the cover and centre spread. The AV really moved me and I could identify with the story after losing Kate.

Have a good summer and see you at The Nationals.

Thank you. Keith

Pictured Below: Keith Brown nds his inner Beatle at the 2022 NAVC

The Letters Page continued ...

Dear Editor,

Is the editor allowed to send a letter to the editor? Well he has and it is up to the editor to either accept or decline the contribution.

The point of my letter concerns AV competitions and whether the AV community should revisit the nature of these.

As the chair of the recent National Audio Visual Championship, there was more than one entrant who had to be pressed to make an entry because simply “they didn't feel they were good enough”. I understand their sentiment and in the past have thought the same. You have to have a chance of some success don’t you?

There are plenty of competitions, (club, regional, national and international) which we can enter and they are a great way of showcasing a very broad range of AV productions. However I am beginning to wonder if the rules of some of these competitions are now stiing opportunities.

I have always been a fan of regional competitions such as those held by a number of the PAGB Federations. These are a great way and a real benet is that the judge will usually provide feedback which is invaluable if you are just starting out. These events seem to attract AV workers who do not enter the more high prole competitions, championship and festivals. That said, if you are in a region where there is an especially strong AV worker, you might not walk away with the silverware but at least you are in with a chance of some sort of judges mention and some feedback.

Our move to more on-line meetings of AV Groups has not helped either. If a club with a signicant on-line membership is permitted to enter a regional competition (because they are located in the region), this means that an entrant from absolutely anywhere n the world can enter. If that is permitted within the rules, then ne, but does it mean that the more regional AV workers are more likely to stand back from entering the competition? Does it serve the AV community poorly if these opportunities are lost? I think so.

I know that in club photography, there are moves to make it a rule that the competition entrant must live in the region and regularly attend the club and that seems fair to me. Just imagine if a successful national photographer, joined a range of camera clubs just to score wins. However, our much smaller AV community has to operate beyond regions if it is to succeed so for me, all of this presents a real dilemma.

In my own case, I choose to exercise a bit of self control when it comes to entering competitions but that is jut the way I am I suppose.

Is there another way forward? I am not suggesting leagues (as in sport) although in some way we do operate a system where someone can enter as a novice or rst time entrant and the Great Northern “New Horizons” is an excellent initiative in this respect. Do we need Novice, Intermediate and Advanced sections and if so how would we make that work? Challenging!

I rather like the idea of themed competitions. The South African events around water, air, light, emotion glass, etc. have been a great success and really challenge AV workers to think up something new and different. The 321 is another excellent concept. Perhaps within the bigger competitions we could have more sub themes such as the interpretation of a song, humour, documentary, travel, nature, etc. I think this is more achievable although it does put extra pressure on the judges and organisers but it is more encouraging, for example for someone who does a great job of interpreting a song but would not necessarily do well overall (although they might)

During the lockdown of 2020, I ran a Beatles themed competition, completely on-line, which was very well received so perhaps themed events have a future and quite frankly, if the winner is from Timbuktu, that is absolutely ne.

So in my view, we are at a crossroads when it comes to competitions and I feel we must do more to make them accessible for all with more opportunities to gain feedback and enjoy success.

I hope that my letter sparks some feedback and comment from AV friends around the world. Please write your letters to the editor of AV News

Best wishes, Alastair