Club Reports
How to get the "F" in FRPS.
13 January 2010
Mac discusses his panel with Tony Wilson.
His presentation to the club featured his personal quest to be awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). For this he required twenty very stylistic self produced prints. At the time Mac resided on Jersey. He decided to produce images illustrating the heritage of Jersey starting off with striking photographs of standing stones. At an early stage however, he made life even more difficult for himself by electing to take the photographs using infra red film. This turns blue skies black and living things with heat, white. This produced the particular style of for boding he was seeking with stones well lit and the surrounds often black. Twenty images of standing stones would not produce the impact he was seeking so he turned to other historical structures including towers, forts and castles ending up with some views of the German fortifications from WWII.
Unfortunately, the Society rejected the work as not being to the high standard required. Mac therefore removed the half dozen prints that the assessors did not like and replaced them with stronger images. Six months later his work was rejected again.
On the basis of ‘Try, Try again’ he took advice and eventually decided that the standing stones that he had started with were not sufficiently threatening. He therefore substituted them with more images of the German occupation.
Mac's presentation involved displaying different images as his panel evolved and the members agreed that the final for boding and threatening selection was worthy of the Fellowship that he was finally awarded at the third attempt.