Afternoon All

Well, that’s got rid of the shortest day so more light to look forward to from now on!
No excuse now not to go out with that camera and start looking for those alphabet photos!
Alphabet photos? Just to remind you:
NEW Challenge! Huge thanks here to Adrian for this idea!
It’s called ‘The Alphabet’ challenge.
The idea is to take photographs depicting all the letters of the alphabet.
You can take photographs of anything except actual letters! In theory, you could end up with 26 images!
So, for example, you could take a photograph of a farm/field gate and within that could be the letter ‘Z,’ or a picture of a hole in a hedge and this could be the letter ‘O.’ Having given you these 2 examples, you can’t use them now!
What you can’t do is take a photography of the Aldi sign and say that covers ‘A,’ ‘L,’ ‘D’ and ‘I’ – sorry!
This runs from now until the ‘show-and-tell’ which will be on the members evening on 19th November 2025, so plenty of time!

Pies, Peas and Puddings:
A big thanks here to Elaine, Lewis, Rhona and Robin for helping to set up the Arts Centre on Wednesday afternoon and thanks to all members who managed to spare the time to enjoy the food, quiz and the raffle and, of course, of the convivial atmosphere! 
Big apologises here to Frank who despite buying raffle tickets failed to secure a prize!
However, a huge thank you to Freda for organising the whole ‘operation’ from A to Z, so to speak, and making sure that all ran very successfully and smoothly and making sure those pies were hot! Thanks Freda!
In conjunction with the above – On Wednesday night we made the following:
Donation £5, Raffle £57 and monies of £70 (profit from the ticket sales) which gave a grand and very respectful total of £132. This money all contributes to the coffers of our club which helps pay for, amongst other things, our speakers!
So, again, big thanks to all!

Notice:
Andy Stewart:
If you don’t know him, this is the guy who photographs amazing images of hares; a message from Barry.
Andy is giving viewing, an exhibition, at the Arts Centre, of his photographs in the new year, from the beginning of January 2025. We, at the club, are, I believe, invited to a pre-showing on Sunday 5^th January. Further information in the next newsletter, so watch this space!

Message from the L&CPU (The Lancashire and Cheshire Photographic Union):
The L&CPU Annual Club Competition 2025 is planned for the weekend of 1 & 2 March and will be held at Elm Bank Conference Centre in Eccles.
Attached are the rules for the competition
The Competition will open for entries on Saturday 18 January 2025 and will be open for 4 weeks.
This timing will allow a review of the entries to confirm they comply with the rules.
Please have a careful read if you are interested.

Up and coming programme of events:
Wednesday 25th December: No meeting.

Wednesday 1st January: No meeting.

Wednesday 8th January: Via Zoom, Ruth Grindrod: Colour, Tones & Textures.
This presentation explores how colour, tone and texture are all interrelated in landscape photography. The talk explores how to apply the theory to practice and shows a range of her work from around the UK and further afield. This talk is more technical than the others but remains audience-friendly and caters for a wide audience.

Wednesday 15^th January: Via Zoom, Geoff Reader, ‘An Evening with Geoff.’
My first section is Sport and has wild water, canoeing and paragliders amongst 7 sports. My landscapes use light to show mountains, ruins, Autumn Scenes, Seascapes etc to their best advantage. A short Misc section breaks up the first half. I am not a Nature Photographer but to complete my portfolio I include some of my favourite images.
After the break I cover my varied ‘People’ shots with some amusing stories of how I got the shot or suffered the consequences!

That’s all folks….
As the year draws to a close, I want to say thank you for being a member of our club and your continued support and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and health, wealth and happiness, and great photography, in 2025.

Cheers

Mike