Click here to see the complete photograph: Sunrise Harvester by John Cavana.
At the October Club Night, professional photographer Peter Preece, supported by his wife, Margaret, gave a presentation on ‘Wildlife and nature photographs: Every picture tells a story’. Peter took up photography on his retirement, but resisted transferring to the digital format until three years ago; his main interest is in photographing wildlife. Peter is also deeply involved in the Heart of England Forest project, which was set up by Felix Dennis before his death in 2014. This project has acquired 6,000 acres of farmland in Warwickshire, where they have landscaped areas to create wildlife habitats and planted 1.4 million trees. Peter has free access to the estate, where he has set up nest boxes and hides so he can indulge his passion for bird photography, perfecting a technique for attracting his favourite subject – the kingfisher – and showing many action shots.
Peter uses pop-up hides and his car (painted in camouflage colours) to get near his subjects. He told us how he attracts birds or mammals to the spot where his camera is pre-focused, sometimes using animal carcasses which have been stored in his freezer as bait. He travels regularly to Scotland and to northern Spain, and most of his photos captured the subjects in action. As well as birds, Peter also showed shots of mammals, including voles, harvest mice, wood mice, rat, weasels, foxes, grey seals and hares, together with butterflies, damselflies and dragonflies. Peter does not like to adjust his wildlife photos by using Photoshop, other than cropping them, but he finished by showing a few amusing manipulations that he uses for Christmas cards and calendars. In summary, this was a most interesting presentation by a very experienced wildlife photographer that was much appreciated by his audience.
A successful photographic exhibition was held at The Institute, Adderbury, on Saturday 17th September, the first of our annual exhibitions, which brought new members to the Society. The next exhibition will be on Saturday, 22nd October, in the Living Room of Deddington Parish Church, 9.00am-1.30pm, the same day as the Deddington Farmers’ Market (ends at 12.30pm).
Richard Broadbent 338173