We started the meeting with something topical, namely the power of imagery and humour to poke fun at companies when they badly mess up, in this case United Airlines. After their debacle the airwaves were full of some fabulous humour.

We then moved onto some examples of imagery with a link provided by Martin – the best 20 views in the UK, as chosen by a poll conducted with Samsung. Sadly the choice of views and some of the quality of the images left something to be desired, which was a shame as a good idea.

We then moved onto some examples of ‘crop’ pictures as chosen by the BBC, where the quality was a little better.

I am always on the look out for people, experiences or examples of where people have excelled in photography and this guy was no exception, with his passion for architectural photography having taken him all the way to winning an international award – inspirational – a minute and a half long and definitely worth a look.

I have been following the iPhone Academy guy Emil Pakarklis for some time (iPhone Photography School) and very good he is too. He has recently collaborated with someone trying to start something similar for DSLR’s and some of his blogs are quite good. I shared one with the group on 12 essential ways to improve your compositions.

I had intended last month to share some of the BBC’s programmes on the history of photography, all three of which were excellent. Sadly, they have slipped off iPlayer but I did find an excellent five minute piece on the renowned photographer John Bulmer. Its full of some amazing photography and his story is well worth hearing.

Finally, and as a nod to this month’s theme, I showed some black and white architectural pictures. RIBA have just made much of their archive available to view and this is a great introduction to the kind of thing you will find there.

We then moved onto our theme of the month ‘A Moment in Time in Black and White’ – carried over from last month. It turned out to be an excellent choice with some great pictures on show from the group, as you can see from the selection below. If I was to stick my neck out and pick a winner, I would probably go for Juliette’s beautiful ‘girl at a window’, closely followed James’s bus, which was a really clever and amusing moment in time!

Juliette Wiles

James Kirkland

Andrew Wilson

Bill Christie

Julian Newton

Leonard Caudrey

Martin Conway

Matthew Taylor

Mira Joshi

Sarah Moore

After a packed evening, we then ran out of time and it was just down to reminding everyone that next month’s meeting is Tuesday 16th May at 7.30, where our theme for the month will be ‘Floral’. Even if you can’t make it along to the meeting if you send me something in good time I will try and present it.

Have a good month and see you all then – all the best AW