Anne introduced the evening with a thankyou to Margaret Drabble for an excellent coffee morning at the old school in Hope (£138 to club funds). Appreciation for the members that put up the exhibition photos on the previous day and also helped with the morning and clearing everything away afterwards.
A reminder that Margaret needs to know who is coming to the autumn meal on November 23rd at Castleton village hall (£18).
Further thanks went to Ian Stanyon for the work he has done to source covers for the exhibition boards and the clips to replace the fragile perspex ones.
During the course of the evening several members had heard about the possibility of seeing the Northern Lights and there is an app that will keep you up to date on the possibility (My Aurora Forecast & Alerts). Little did we expect to miss them whilst in our meeting!
There is another celestial photographic opportunity on October 17th when the “Hunters Moon” is hopefully going to appear.
The presentation for the evening was by Zoe and John Sampson with the title of “Chobe River of Dreams
As John was suffering with a throat infection Zoe was the narrator for the evening which she did with great style.
As she explained, John had wanted to see the Chobe from the photographers viewpoint for a long time. They booked a trip with Pangolin Photographic Safaris which seemed to fulfil their hopes and desires (possibly fulfilling Johns dreams).
The Linyati river becomes the Chobe forming the north eastern border of the Chobe National Park in Botswana.
It was very difficult for Zoe and John to compress hundreds of photos into an evening presentation but it must be said that the quality and variety of their photography held us all spellbound. Many details were given of the location, the journey, the hotel, the boats and numerous cameras and lenses. Suffice it to say that it was detailed and enlightening.
However, what many of the members wanted to see was the wildlife and we were not dissapointed.
Exceptional photos of a huge diversity of animals in a range of settings showed what an amazing experience they had had. On this webpage we cannot show or even list the range of wild life shown but her is a small selection to give you a flavour of a great evening.
It must be said that Elephants were a frequent subject for the presentation and they did admit to a particular fondness for “Elly”. There were some very scary shots of Hippos getting rather too close along with crocodiles and lions. A dazzling array of birds were also featured, the fish eagle being the largest (I think) and the smallest were the bee eaters and kingfishers. The impala, kudu and giraffes looked majestic whilst the buffalo and baboon were suitably content.
Many thanks Zoe and John for all the hours reviewing photos and putting them into a presentation , it was a wonderful evening.