John Thompson

This evening (6th December) our guest was John Thompson ARPS, EFIAP, CPAGB of both Morpeth Camera Club and Alnwick and District Camera Club. In fact John is a past President of Alnwick CC.

John commenced by explaining his love of Blurb Photo Books which he readily uses to document his trips, both holidays & photo vacations.

Venice was the first location John’s prints took us to. He told how, when several large cruise ships arrived in port, because of the sheer number of people they disembarked daytime photography proved a challenge. On this trip John took only his Nikon D700 with one  24-70 lens & no tripod which also proved a challenge when attempting night photography (less tourists) hand held. This however didn’t stop John from capturing some beautiful images.

A return to the UK followed where John explained how here, his intention was to revisit local photographic locations. Locations he had visited and photographed on many occasions, but to try and do something different this time. He decided to turn his hand to infrared photography and to show 3 images of each location.

With this in mind John had one of his older DLSR’s converted for infrared. John explained how he experimented with infrared testing the limits with what could be achieved. His hope was to be able to produce prints with varying tones so as to be nearly indistinguishable from a straight mono conversion without the extremes of black & white so indicative of infrared photography.  John showed us some beautiful infrared prints encompassing such locations as the Pennines, the Cheviots, Berwick, Bamburgh & Holy Island.  Closer to home Belsay Hall, Blyth with it’s wind turbines and Seaton Sluice featured with images both beautifully composed and printed.

To end the evening John showed some mono prints taken at night, hand held on Morpeth High Street before moving on to Stannington, home for John, where he explained he had set himself a little project of photographing, at night, the brightly illuminated petrol filling station in Stannington that had caught his eye from the A1 for sometime.  This also included night visits to the nearby East Coast main line level crossing to try and capture passing trains and the flat LED flood lights that bathed the crossing.  A task which proved challenging with john using the ‘machine gun’ technique with the hope of capturing at least one usable image.

To end his presentation John took questions from some of the members before receiving a round of applause for a thoroughly entertaining evening with top quality prints and entertaining narrative.

Bob Finlay (President)