From The Underworld of the Parga Trees by Marie Fitzgerald

From Shine on Japan by Fabrizio Quagliuso

Jonny Baker brought along some photos he’d taken at the 80s rewind festival, including a Sue Pollard look-a-like. He also talked about the Ron Arad show he recently attended and enjoyed at The Roundhouse and showed us a short film he’d made of one of the exhibits. Freda Jesudason brought along her black and white photos taken on a recent trip to Israel.

Mullet by Jonny Baker

Mount of Olives by Freda Jesudason

Jonny Back has been trying out online companies to print wedding albums for his clients and brought a few along for us to look at. It was interesting to see how different papers and printers affect the look of the end product – and also to see Jonny’s various layout styles.

Chris Moxey gave a presentation of her ongoing series on domestic architecture, from modernist to post-war houses.

From The Wedding Album by Jonny Back

The Miller House, Palm Springs by Chris Moxey

Our next meeting will be at 7.30 on Tuesday October 4th at OPEN Ealing, 113 Uxbridge Road, London, W5 5TL. We welcome old and new members. Please bring along any work that you’d like to show the group.

The Ealing Group exhibition Lives is now up and running for 6 weeks. Photos of the opening night are here.

I went up to Trafalgar Square on 23 Jan to support other photographers in the defence of our rights to take photographs in public places and to protest against the police use of stop and search powers. As quoted in the British Journal of Photography photographers were protesting against the use of section 44 of the terrorism act 2000 which gives broad stop and search powers to police officers. These powers have been found illlegal by the European Court pf Human Rights. The court said officers could easily abuse the powers and that, since officers can stop anyone without need for suspicion, it was virtually impossible for a member of the public to prove thyat the powers had been abused

There were an esitmated 2000 photographers gathered and LIP was well represented. I met up with five others including John Stead. Organised by the campaign group I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist, the event seemed well attended, if a little unfocused. There were no speakers as such although I did meet Baroness Sarah Ludford, a LibDem MEP who was there to support the action. Generally a good time was had by all and I don’t think I’ve seen so many cameras in such a small area.

The Ealing group has occasional challenges, which are either an excuse to get together and take cameras out and share photos or sometimes a chance to try something a bit different. The last one we did was a lot of fun. A few of us had been to see an exhibition by Gilbert Garcin. Garcin took up photography aged 65 when he retired. His approach is to take self portraits, cut them out literally and create scenes that are often comical or absurd with him in them in which he explores the human condition. The challenge was to create a Garcin-esque photo ideally using scissors and props but photoshop if all else failed. Some of the results are on the challenges page – there were more but I am still waiting to get some to add in. I also created a group on flickr that anyone else can add their attempt to. If you are interested download this pdf for more details and take up the challenge. Have a look at garcin’s work here to see samples of his work to spark your imagination (click on one of the years and scroll through). This was out of the comfort zone for most of us in the group but that was what made it good!