Members of the Isle of Man Photographic Society enjoyed a superb evening of photographic excellence this week - with a distinctive contrast between two presentations, one showing the old and the other the new.

Our evening started off with a presentation by Jack Kaighin - a popular visitor with a history of showing a selection of his wonderful old lantern slides of island life taken from about 1900 or so onwards.

He also demonstrated some excellent up-to-date skills with his presentation - not shown as usual on a magic lantern but with a digitally-projected series of slides which he had scanned using a macro set-up and which had preserved all the beautiful colours and details of the old slides.

The first slides shown were of several "series" of eight or twelve images - rather like a comic book - of a small boy playing a trick on his older sister and her boyfriend, for example, and of express steam engines of the day.

Slides of old Peel followed - the fishing boats, herring being filleted on the quay, the castle, the harbour and the people - and were followed by images of St John’s, Ramsey, and Laxey, all of which evoked a range of memories of life as it was, and all accompanied by a highly informative commentary.

Bill Callow then followed with a wide range of images, both colour and monochrome, demonstrating his skills as well as his approach to photography but in particular his landscape work.

highlighting

Truly a man for all seasons, he contended that his preference was for days of mist, rain and clouds - enabling his use of the light to highlight the particular subject of the images - of snow on the hills, some colourful trees, or of a pathway through the woods, for example.

The commentary was insightful, pointing out that the camera equipment used today is almost irrelevant as most cameras are highly capable, even the cheapest.

So it is the imagination and thought going into the shot that makes a great image, as his work clearly showed.

His compositions were particularly noteworthy - carefully constructed, with lead-in lines, with detail in the critical areas of focusensuring that the viewer could always appreciate the reason for the shot, with artistry resulting, not just in the form of snapshots.

Club president Chris Blyth gave a well-earned vote of thanks to both speakers for a most enjoyable evening.

meetings

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

Meetings are open to the public, and all will be given a very warm welcome.

Full details of our programme can be found on our website at www.iomps.com. Our next meeting on Wednesday, January 3, will include a presentation by Chris Blyth, and the opportunity for club members to show their images of Cregneash - a challenge set over the summer months.

Sue Jones