It was the turn this week of Graham Harvey to make a presentation to the Isle of Man Photographic Society with a selection of over 200 digital images entitled Magic of Africa - and he did a superb job, to the great enjoyment of our members.

Graham is well known for his work both in the Isle of Man Lions Club and at the Curraghs Wildlife Park, where he takes responsibility for stimulating corporate sponsorship and managing the volunteers in helping develop and maintain the facilities.

He also now spends some of his time volunteering at the Kariega Game Reserve near Port Elizabeth in South Africa - making annual trips for the last five years - which has given him privileged access to the wildlife there and providing the opportunity for some close-up photography.

Graham’s presentation split neatly into two halves - the first being of the wildlife where his images were spectacular.

Antelope such as springbok, kudu, blesbok, water buck and eland featured, as well as predators such as lions, serval, and cheetah, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes - often in the company of their young offspring and making for some delightful shots.

Birdlife was also shown with a number of images of unusual and very brightly coloured species such as the narina trogon, glossy starling, and malachite kingfisher, but also including predators such as secretary birds and fish eagles.

A more serious problem was finding a highly poisonous boomslang (literally ’tree snake’) in one of the bedrooms......perhaps a close encounter of the wrong kind!

The second section was of a more serious social nature, covering the charity work with the local Xhosa people and particularly with a school and a soup kitchen providing food for the children in the local township of Ekuphumleni.

The images were fascinating and revealed much about local life and the issues facing modern South Africa - poverty, education, social inequality and unemployment - issues very clearly exposed with the power of photography.

Club president Chris Blyth gave the well-deserved vote of thanks.

The society meets at the Art Society Building (Thie Ellyn) in Withington Road, Douglas, with all meetings starting at 7.30pm.

Our next meeting on Wednesday, March 13, will be a presentation by Tony Curtis, followed by a showing of a folio of digitally projected images from the L&CPU.

Meetings are open to the public, non-members with a modest entry fee, and all will be given a very warm welcome.

Full details of our programme can be found on our website at www.iomps.com.