The new season of regular weekly Wednesday evening meetings for the Isle of Man Photographic Society started with a real tour-de-force - a large audience including a pleasing number of both new and returning members was given a very warm welcome by our new president, Jeremy Broome-Smith.

His opening remarks made clear that the key objective for him and for the committee was that members enjoyed their photography, shared their knowledge and expertise, and had fun whilst doing so - and the programme was geared to achieving this.

Once details of the programme had been explained, and as had been requested for the meeting, a dozen or so of the membership provided images of their summer activities - a total of some 120+ images resulted, with each member providing background information on their selection.

It started with Jeremy’s own images - images with an emphasis on his particular interest in both macro shots of insects and in long exposure landscapes which produces interesting results for clouds and seascapes.

Family holidays, both home and abroad, featured large - children and grand-children, and landscapes of Italy and Switzerland, a Mediterranean cruise, Spain, the Lake District and USA were shown by a number of members, including Janet Henry, Chris and Ruth Nicholls, Jonathan Carey and Chris and Moira Blyth.

Steve Johnstone showed his continuing fascination with natural history images with some excellent shots of birds, a subject also enjoyed by Beryl Quayle.

Jiri Podobski provided some lovely images of his hobbies - of folk dancing and scootering, Barry Murphy’s interest in macro shots, stimulated by a practical session in our last season, provided a further sequence of shots, whilst Martyn Parnell’s enthusiasm for motorcycle shots of TT racing was clearly evidenced with a dozen or more shots, all pin sharp - the bikes in various states of ’flying’ at top speed.

Our next meeting, on October 9, will be an introduction session for new members (and a refresher for existing members) with demonstrations of the working of the society’s website andhow to enter our various competitions, re-sizing of images ready for upload to the website, the various methods of mounting a print, and addressing any questions or queries members may have.

The society meets at the Arts Society Building (Thie Ellyn) in Worthington Road, Douglas, on Wednesday evenings, all meetings starting at 7.30pm.

All meetings are open to the public (with a modest fee for non-members) and all will be given a very warm welcome.

More details of the society and its programme can be found on our website at www.iomps.com.

The society gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council.

Chris Blyth