A View from the Serving Hatch

December 2024

An occasional blog by Alan Keen

Welcome to the fourth “A View from the Serving Hatch” for the 2024/2025 season.

Some of the members emailed replies for the “special meeting” on the 3rd December suggested that this blog should include more forward-looking content as well as a retrospective look at the previous month.

In this issue, I have tried to do that by, not only looking back on the month of December 2024 , but also comment on the month ahead, January 2025. We had only meetings scheduled for December. 3rd December –

“Special meeting”

This was a meeting called to discuss the future of the Club. It was well attended, and members had an opportunity to contribute, both in writing and verbally at the meeting. There was consensus that members wanted the Club to continue, and the Council will consider ways to make the Club sustainable heading forward. Updates will be given to members on a regular basis.

10Th December –

“Portrait Night” At this meeting last year, we had a visit from 3 members of Doncaster Steam Punks, who acted as our models. However, this year we were unable to find anyone who was available on the night, so members volunteered to take it in turns to be the models. Some interesting images were produced, many of which have found their way onto the Members Facebook page.

19th December – Christmas Social

The last meeting of the year was our Club Christmas Social. Members of the Council provided a few snacks to accompany a General Knowledge Quizfollowed by Steve Dormer showing us a series card tricks, which baffled the audience. This proved to be a relaxing end to the calendar year.

Next Month – 4 Meetings

7th January- Mobile Phone images – Members presentations This meeting is going to be a busy one! As well as giving an opportunity for members to show their mobile phone images it is also the last day for members to hand in their competition entries to Nick.

• The Annual Print Panel Competition – A maximum of 2 entries of a Panel consisting of 3 images (i.e. a maximum of 6 images)

• Round 3 Prints (Maximum of 2 Colour and 2 Mono prints) plus 2 DPIs entered on Photoentry.

14th January – “A bit of This, That and the Other” – Erica Oram “This talk is centred around landscape, pictorial and street photography and is about looking beyond the obvious and being a little creative, both in camera and afterwards, to produce something a bit different. I would much rather make an interesting image out of something ordinary thing than make an ordinary image out of something interesting. ” Erica Oram

21st January – Judging of the Annual Print Panel Competition. This competition will be judged by Martin Litchfield, CPAGB

28thth January – Judging of the of Round 3 Prints and DPIs This competition will be judged by Richard Hall, from Sheffield Photographic Society. He is a keen amateur photographer. Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society and member of Sheffield Photographic Society. I was awarded DPAGB in 2021 and BPE3* in 2022.

Alan Keen