It hardly seems possible that we have been organising an annual photographic exhibition in Rye every year for 31 years and that some of the photographers involved in this year’s exhibition have exhibited in all 31!
The 31st exhibition by members of the Rye & District Camera Club was held in St Marys Centre off Lion Street September 21-22. 15 photographers took part and each displayed a panel of mounted or framed photographs of their own choice. The great variety of subject matter on display was wonderful and it was very encouraging for the exhibitors to hear visitors’ appreciative and complimentary comments on their work.
Last year we experienced appalling weather on the Saturday that certainly kept visitors off the streets, this year the weekend weather on the whole was great and over the two days nearly 450 visitors came to view our work. We provided refreshments once again and many visitors took advantage of these whilst they admired the photographs on display and were able to chat to the photographers and also to the members of the Club who stewarded the exhibition for all of both days.
Many prints were for sale and a good number of visitors were quick to snap up a favourite image. Whilst many of the images on display had been captured fairly locally, some of our photographers had travelled far and wide to capture some of their images, with photos taken as far afield as Iceland and Africa.
One panel of monochrome photographs were film images and printed in the members’ darkroom, but the majority of other pictures were home printed digital images of a huge variety of subject matter ranging from landscapes and natural history to portraits, aircraft, animal studies and some images that had been crafted using expert skills in image manipulation software.
In addition to the display around the walls several photographers had other mounted prints for sale that were shown off in adjacent display racks, and other members were displaying many wonderful images in the shape of greetings cards for sale.
As usual we asked our visitors to try to pick out their favourite image of all those on show (not the easiest of tasks!) and to take one of the slips we provided on which they recorded the photographer’s name and the title of their favourite image. This is an aspect of the exhibition that we enjoy and the photographer whose image gets most votes as the public’s favourite receives an award at the Camera Club’s annual awards event. Quite a number of our visitors rose to the challenge and picked a photograph of a dune coast at sunrise (or was it sunset?) by Norman Ferguson as their favourite, with a beautiful portrait of a young lady named Chrissie by Paul Whiteman as runner up.
Image Credits: Kenneth Bird .