Morning All

With one eye on the rear-view mirror, 2025 is disappearing fast, already a bit soft-focused and fading into bokeh; motion-blurred, slightly noisy, a bit wonky and impossible to rescue in post; best left unedited!
Fortunately, ahead, 2026 is perfectly framed, coming into focus, lining up nicely in the viewfinder with clean sensors, good light and full of promise.
Optimism is set to auto, beautifully exposed and begging us to press the shutter. So new year, with fresh batteries and absolutely no excuses for camera shake, tripods are at the ready… click and we’re off!
Happy New Year!

Notices:

Calendar 2026
As already mentioned, and to repeat! We have been tasked, again, to produce images for the 2027 calendar!
Boundaries: Focused where possible on Garstang and immediate surroundings; however, any images considered between Lancaster in the north, Preston in the south, Blackpool in the west and Abbeystead/Bleasdale in the east. This should give us plenty of opportunity, so please start thinking and snapping!
So, this means that the scope has now widened! Please get out and about, in the fullness of time, so that we can offer a great selection to the Arts Centre committee. All images submitted will be shown and voted upon on Wednesday 13^th May and the selected top 36 will be sent to the Arts Centre committee for their final selection of 12/14 for the calendar.

Challenge, for the new year – just what you wanted and dreamed of and to test out all that new gear Santa brought you; what could possibly go wrong!
And, the challenge is – A winter’s scene!
Any image, colour or black and white, which will portray a wintery picture.
You can enter as many as you want, within reason! The deadline for the ‘Show-and-Tell’ will be Wednesday 25^th February, so that gives us all just over 6 weeks and the BBC weather predicts ideal conditions coming up! Certainly cold and crisp and even this morning!

Coffee duty this Wednesday:
Coffee and tea duty for this coming Wednesday is Shelly and Lewis – may thanks in advance!

Up and coming programme of events:

Wednesday 7^th January – Neil Protheroe via zoom on landscapes.
Neil writes: I thought perhaps to devote the first half of the talk to my “journey” in the world of photography, what I do and my approach to landscape photography; and the second half to a photographic tour of New Zealand’s scenic highlights.
Also, for the last three years I have also been closely involved in photographing the white horses of the Camargue in the South of France, and I would like to refer to that photography as well.

Wednesday 14^th January – Jerry Webb, via zoom on ‘Urban and Street photography.’

Wednesday 21^st January – Judging of our third internal competition, ‘Creatures and Plants of the World Cup.’ This competition will be judged by Sheila Giles.

Wednesday 28^th January – Jeremy Malley-Smith, via zoom, on Scottish Wildlife.
Jeremy writes: The west coast of Scotland is rich in wildlife and over the past eleven years, I’ve enjoyed watching, studying and photographing the special wildlife in this part of the country. Birds, mammals, landscapes, flowers, insects are just some of the photos you can expect to see. I explain why some photos work/don’t work, which lens to choose and share helpful tips too.

That’s all folks and see you Wednesday!

Mike