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The Town Band at MSN Day.
A veritable feast for eyes and ears.
Bill Collett reminds us why he takes photos!
07/10/2022
Longstanding member Bill Collett led our Thursday meeting this week, and his perfectly timed session was awash with images that only he can take! Bill is a quietly creative photographer who takes time to work on his images to achieve the effects that he envisages. He is fascinated by shapes and textures as well as reflections and shadows, and we often “lose” him briefly on our walks whilst he diverts and experiments. His presentation was a good balance between audio visual sequences, upon which he admits to “still be working”, and stills that fitted together as themes and reflected the wide range of interests he follows with his camera.
The evening began impressively with a sequence of intriguing reflections, mainly of Bath and The Royal Crescent, captured in the polished surfaces of the smart cars that line the streets there. In stark contrast, the rust and regalia at the East Somerset Railway in Cranmore fed Bill’s obsession with textures and tones, as well as supporting his love of all things steam!
Bill is particularly skilful in his use of posterization techniques that lend colour and intrigue to his abstracts, but equally impressive are his efforts to create abstract art through the use of black and white. These are particularly stunning when used with his professional knowledge of engines and buildings, and we were certainly seeing a range of things, through his engineering eye, rendered minimalistic in mono.
We enjoyed Bill’s records of visits to the Frome Cheese Show with all its agricultural roots in Somerset, together with the shots of architectural splendour of Montacute House and Gardens. He supported the recent Midsomer Norton Day, capturing the local band in all that heat, as well as the energetic and enthusiastic Maypole dancers. Perhaps the most enduring images of the evening for me, were those he captured at the Prescott Hill Climb. Again, the shine of the auto drew his eye, as did the vagaries of early, expensive engineering on the Bucattis and the Alfas. Those ancient buggies resplendent in their time trials certainly had Tony interested, and made more than one of us sit up and take notice.
Bill rounded off the evening with images of the very local music festival at Priston, where musicians of all shapes, sizes and age presented ample opportunities to work with light and movement, and I got the feeling that a few more of us would be looking out for this in next year’s calendar. It was an interesting evening that left many of us wondering how he does some of it- maybe we can persuade him to share some of his techniques at a later date.
The triptych entries are in now, and those will be judged in a few weeks. Meanwhile, we look forward to an evening led by Graham next week which will almost certainly have a horticultural feel to it.
Jenny Short 07. 10.2022
The evening began impressively with a sequence of intriguing reflections, mainly of Bath and The Royal Crescent, captured in the polished surfaces of the smart cars that line the streets there. In stark contrast, the rust and regalia at the East Somerset Railway in Cranmore fed Bill’s obsession with textures and tones, as well as supporting his love of all things steam!
Bill is particularly skilful in his use of posterization techniques that lend colour and intrigue to his abstracts, but equally impressive are his efforts to create abstract art through the use of black and white. These are particularly stunning when used with his professional knowledge of engines and buildings, and we were certainly seeing a range of things, through his engineering eye, rendered minimalistic in mono.
We enjoyed Bill’s records of visits to the Frome Cheese Show with all its agricultural roots in Somerset, together with the shots of architectural splendour of Montacute House and Gardens. He supported the recent Midsomer Norton Day, capturing the local band in all that heat, as well as the energetic and enthusiastic Maypole dancers. Perhaps the most enduring images of the evening for me, were those he captured at the Prescott Hill Climb. Again, the shine of the auto drew his eye, as did the vagaries of early, expensive engineering on the Bucattis and the Alfas. Those ancient buggies resplendent in their time trials certainly had Tony interested, and made more than one of us sit up and take notice.
Bill rounded off the evening with images of the very local music festival at Priston, where musicians of all shapes, sizes and age presented ample opportunities to work with light and movement, and I got the feeling that a few more of us would be looking out for this in next year’s calendar. It was an interesting evening that left many of us wondering how he does some of it- maybe we can persuade him to share some of his techniques at a later date.
The triptych entries are in now, and those will be judged in a few weeks. Meanwhile, we look forward to an evening led by Graham next week which will almost certainly have a horticultural feel to it.
Jenny Short 07. 10.2022