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Club outing to Wingham Wildlife Park

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Report courtesy of Marjorie Burge.

While the club has its summer break, we still keep up with our photography by meeting for outings, and on Saturday 16th June a group of APS members met at Wingham Wildlife Park, making the most of the fine weather and looking for photo opportunities.

There was plenty to choose from at Wingham, with the ever-popular meerkats, as well as monkeys, penguins, reptiles, lions, tigers and many more. With caged animals it is always a challenge to get good shots through the fencing but at Wingham there are several enclosures where you can walk through and take photographs without the barriers.







The Flamingo section was popular with the group, and the tropical butterfly house, although a little on the warm side, presented lots of chances for close up shots. But by far the most fun for all of us was the ring-tailed lemur enclosure, where the animals really did interact with the photographers, climbing all over us, the inquisitive babies’ playful behaviour maki…
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Photographing the Givaudan Tour de Fragrance Challenge, 2018

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A team of Givaudan employees set themselves a challenge of cycling the 900 miles between their San Celoni site in Barcelona back to Ashford, arriving on the 5th June. Each of the ten cyclists had pledges to raise £500 each towards the company's chosen charities: Kent Association for the Blind and Pilgrims Hospices.

As part of Ashford Photographic Society's partnership with Givaudan, we were asked if we could photograph the homecoming. Adrian Aslett and Martin Till responded to the request and attended on the day to capture the event.

The cycling team being: Mike Cullen, Gary Nicholson, Tracey Dray, Simon Jones, Martin Blades, Andre Stiffell, Kevin Beardwell, Tony Britton and newbies Martin Murphy and Damir Hess, ably supported by Simon Clifton and Roy Fulcher as the Support Crew.

The team started training early in the year but can anything really prepare you for 900 miles in 9 days – 2 days cycling over the Pyrennes - then the full  length of France, back via the tunnel to co…
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End of season awards night

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Ashford Photographic Society

On Friday 25th May, APS members, friends and family celebrated a wonderful year of photography, lectures, outings and competitions by gathering together at Givaudan to wine and dine together. Our special guests for the evening were Annie and Clive Tanner FRPS MPAGB APAGB. Clive, who has a passion for church interiors, had brought along some of his outdoor panels, and talked of the pleasure he found in putting them together, reminding us that pleasing ourselves was occasionally more important than pleasing the judges. Awards for those achieving top places in our League and Trophy competitions were handed out at the end of the evening by Clive and Chris Shore, our Competition Secretary, and will be on our website soon.







It was a lovely evening of celebration and friendship, bringing our season to an end. A sigh of relief that the pressure is off for a while, but APS members will be out with their cameras during the summer break trying to find that special im…
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Tom Way

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Report courtesy of Marjorie Burge.

On Friday 18th May, Tom Way, European Wildlife Photographer 2016, explained his approach to wildlife photography. Tom favours a fine art approach to photography, has exhibited world wide, and shares his knowledge by giving lectures, talks and workshops. Having discovered the beauty of wildlife – elephants, lions, leopards, gorillas - in Africa, Tom set up his business to fund his travels so that he could see these amazing animals wandering free. In this country his photography covers local wildlife - kingfishers, badgers, little owls, red foxes, puffins - and provides many of his images sold as framed prints. Abroad, in Africa – Zambia, Kenya, Uganda – he is looking for competition wildlife shots. Shooting mainly with aperture priority, settings are crucial. His images must have light, character, emotion and simplicity, and no tension. Single images with out-of-focus backgrounds are his ideal – if you haven’t got the ideal lens, shoot with the subje…
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Annual exhibition competition

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Report courtesy of Marjorie Burge.

On Friday 11th May, we were delighted to welcome Ian Stone DPAGB BPE3* and Marie-Laure Stone DPAGB BPE5* EFIAP Platinum and EFIAP Diamond 1, from Folkestone Camera Club, to judge our Annual Exhibition Print Competition. As our Chairman said, this competition is the climax of our season, and as the prints were put up it was clear that our photographers had entered some of their best work - mono, colour, digital and dark room. Ian and Marie-Laure are experienced photographers in all fields, leaning towards nature, leaning away from creative, but ready to give every image their whole attention. Each image carefully assessed. As well as camera skills, titles and mounts were important, Marie-Laure liked our use of textured papers, sharpness of course, particularly with eyes, cropping, print quality, distracting backgrounds, and effort involved in composition, all taken into account. There was such quality in all images that it was inevitable that many were…
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Paul Sanders - Landscape and fine art photography

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Report courtesy of Marjorie Burge.

On Friday 4th May our speaker was Paul Sanders SWPP Gold, a professional photographer, specialising in landscape and fine art photography, running workshops, writing for magazines, and, happily for us, talking about his photography to clubs. Photography started early for Paul, secretly 'borrowing' his father's camera, and never looking back. His career in news photography started with four years covering Europe, and then becoming Picture Editor of The Times, looking after photographers in war situations and studying 20,000 pictures each day. After eight stress-filled years, Paul moved away from newspapers and began his journey into landscape photography. Joe Cornish influenced his initial approach, but true enjoyment only came after his realisation that he should take his own path, do whatever he wanted, and please himself. Photography for Paul is therapeutic - an emotional and spiritual experience. No Photoshop (spend time with your came…
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Print panel competition

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Report courtesy of Marjorie Burge.

An evening to celebrate and remember this Friday at APS when David Silk judged the Driftwood Trophy Print Panel Competition. David is a member of Isle of Thanet Camera Club, AG Mono and, recently, the Verve Group, and his photography background covers everything photographic, literally from beginning to end.  Before coming to Ashford, David had researched the art of putting together and judging panels, so was well prepared, he thought, for anything. Anything except the  excellence and quality of every single panel. Apart from feeling that one or two panels could be improved with, maybe, a different centre image, although aware that this was the photographer’s choice, David could find little he would alter on any of them. The photographers had obviously approached this competition with a panel in mind, not just putting pictures together, but spending serious thought and time on achieving perfection, and they had succeeded. Some had come right out of t…
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