Good to see everyone and what fabulous weather we are enjoying (maybe not the next couple of days but at least the sun remains) but seems not so long ago that it was wet wet wet, and now I’m having to water the garden! Image © Monireh Jassat.

I started the meeting by promoting this little item that appeared in the papers this week, all about the photographer that was a friend of Prince Philip and was invited to take up a post inside a ‘fake pillar’ at St Georges Chapel Windsor and take some pictures of his funeral – typical of the man apparently – a great picture of a great man of pictures.
As we had a packed programme I kept my preamble short this month and only showed the finalists in the Bird Photographer of the Year awards; some awesome stuff in here but with some of it very attainable, the swans for instance (the old adage, you need to be in it to count was never truer).
We had a split theme this month, ‘spring’ and pictures taken on the common by those members involved in our collaboration with FOBC and Barnes Artists. Again, some great stuff on show and I hope being able to show some pictures from our latest project that it has helped those involved with any ideas/inspiration they might need. The project goes on until June, so please carry on collating your pictures; to help I shall put out another ‘what to see on the Common’ for May in a few days’ time.
Stand outs for me from our spring shots, Ati, Julian (for a nice use of filters) and Monireh for some great ingenuity. With the common shots, James K and Nigel for their fine editing skills and John and Sue O for their logs.
Well done everyone, another fine spread of image creation.
I so enjoyed James and Nigel’s work that I suggested that this be our inspiration for our theme for the coming month, which everyone seemed to like – so for next month could members please pull together either 3 double exposure pictures or Intentional Camera Movement pictures or a mixture of both.  

Thanks again and see you all next month – meeting date 18 May.  Andrew Wilson