ALL CHANGE
17th November 2025
Following the enforced cancellation of our meeting last week due to road works outside the hall we use, we were delighted to be able to meet again, this time in premises provided by one of our members. Colin Walls was our guest speaker, but as he was appearing via Zoom from his home in Malvern, he was not inconvenienced by the change.
Colin is a little different to the majority of our speakers. He does not take a fee, but does his talks because he enjoys meeting new people and sharing his work. He requests a donation to a charity working to restore sight to people in Africa and last year raised over £1,000.
His subject was ‘Observational Photography’. He claims he takes what he sees and what, he believes, others tend to not see or deem worthy of recording. In accordance with his thinking, he does not process images more than absolutely necessary. In particular he does not correct converging verticals when looking up, as that is his view when he takes the shot.
Colin began with a series of shots of architecture and spoke of the fascination to him of the colours and forms of buildings juxtaposed with others quite different. In a separate section he looked at the reflections of buildings facing glass fronted buildings. These are inevitably distorted, often with very attractive results.
Colin takes few landscape shots, but those he does take tend to be very simple. He is also not keen on taking pictures of people in the conventional sense. He likes shots taken in the street showing some context and with the subject being unaware. We saw a number of such examples, and the common factor was that they were all on a phone. This seemed symbolic of modern times when life is so often lived through a screen.
We saw some complex but interesting images which combined a person inside a building with a reflection of a facing building in the window beside which they were sitting. Birmingham, we were told, is a mecca for such shots and so it seemed from those we saw.
Some of Colin’s shots from the street looked at smaller details. Particularly fascinating was a padlock which had been spray painted with some street art which was visible behind it. It had obviously been moved slightly as the colours did not quite line up. He also noticed some interesting reflections of a wooden house in the adjacent silver car. Rendered in monochrome it was a striking image. On returning some time later, the owners had replaced the car and there was a red one in its place, which Colin said gave an entirely different effect.
Next week we will be holding our third competition of the season, which this time has the theme of ‘Reflections’. It will be interesting to see how our efforts compare with those shown to us by Colin.
Full details can be found on the club web site: http://www.retford-photographic.co.uk/
Meetings begin at 7.30pm in St Joseph’s Hall, Babworth Road, Retford every Monday and apart from the seasonal mid-season break, there will be a meeting every Monday until the end of April 2026. The programme can be found on the web site together with brief summaries of meetings.
Colin is a little different to the majority of our speakers. He does not take a fee, but does his talks because he enjoys meeting new people and sharing his work. He requests a donation to a charity working to restore sight to people in Africa and last year raised over £1,000.
His subject was ‘Observational Photography’. He claims he takes what he sees and what, he believes, others tend to not see or deem worthy of recording. In accordance with his thinking, he does not process images more than absolutely necessary. In particular he does not correct converging verticals when looking up, as that is his view when he takes the shot.
Colin began with a series of shots of architecture and spoke of the fascination to him of the colours and forms of buildings juxtaposed with others quite different. In a separate section he looked at the reflections of buildings facing glass fronted buildings. These are inevitably distorted, often with very attractive results.
Colin takes few landscape shots, but those he does take tend to be very simple. He is also not keen on taking pictures of people in the conventional sense. He likes shots taken in the street showing some context and with the subject being unaware. We saw a number of such examples, and the common factor was that they were all on a phone. This seemed symbolic of modern times when life is so often lived through a screen.
We saw some complex but interesting images which combined a person inside a building with a reflection of a facing building in the window beside which they were sitting. Birmingham, we were told, is a mecca for such shots and so it seemed from those we saw.
Some of Colin’s shots from the street looked at smaller details. Particularly fascinating was a padlock which had been spray painted with some street art which was visible behind it. It had obviously been moved slightly as the colours did not quite line up. He also noticed some interesting reflections of a wooden house in the adjacent silver car. Rendered in monochrome it was a striking image. On returning some time later, the owners had replaced the car and there was a red one in its place, which Colin said gave an entirely different effect.
Next week we will be holding our third competition of the season, which this time has the theme of ‘Reflections’. It will be interesting to see how our efforts compare with those shown to us by Colin.
Full details can be found on the club web site: http://www.retford-photographic.co.uk/
Meetings begin at 7.30pm in St Joseph’s Hall, Babworth Road, Retford every Monday and apart from the seasonal mid-season break, there will be a meeting every Monday until the end of April 2026. The programme can be found on the web site together with brief summaries of meetings.