By Email 20/05/2026
Hello MPC Members and Friends,
I hope all is well! Twenty members and friends enjoyed a brilliant Member’s Evening programme on the 19th. During the evening four members - Richard, Ian, Jayne and Anthony- each shared five of their favourite images in five minutes, a popular format for sharing devised by our Programme Coordinator John C. These brief, enjoyable presentations provided much insight into the interests and passions of our four colleagues through their carefully selected favourite photographs. This was really enjoyable - thank you to our four presenters!
We also enjoyed two slideshow presentations that reflected recent club events: a “Dawn Photos” project organised by Margaret, and an outdoor portrait workshop organised by Andy.
More than sixty beautiful and fascinating images were captured in dawn light by seven very determined club members in late April and early May. Those taking part were up and out well before sunrise in order to take photographs in the unique light only encountered at dawn, and taken in a variety of locations including Crakehall, West Tanfield, Redcar, Studley Royal, Healy and Saltburn. The photographs collected and compiled by James for the slideshow are beautiful and admired by us all.
An outdoor portrait workshop organised by Andy on the 12th of May attracted fifteen club members - a record turnout! Although the evening was quite breezy and cold, the light was sufficient for our intrepid members to take a number of excellent portraits around St.Mary’s Church. Andy compiled photographs into a slide show that included portraits from all the participants. The portraits he shared reflected a very successful experience in portrait photography for all involved, particularly the importance of developing a dialogue between the photographer and the model in order to capture a good portrait with authentic facial expressions. We were also reminded of the continuing influence of AI on photography when Victor demonstrated software that very effectively makes the subject of a portrait look younger!
Competition judge and club member Kendall P took us through more than thirty beautiful landscapes entered into our latest competition, “Yorkshire Landscapes”. Kendall offered clear, thoughtful feedback on each member’s set of images, with more detailed observations provided on the strongest image in each set. The photographs revealed a great range in what our photographers considered a Yorkshire landscape with many differences in the key subject and composition of photographs. As with all of our competitions, choosing the top photographs is no easy task with so many terrific photographs in the mix. Kendall did a great job selecting the images taken by the following members:
1st Place Richard C
2nd Place Jayne F
3rd Place Peter D
Highly Commended Ian G
Commended Margaret L
Commended Victor P
Commended John C
Well done to all who entered and especially our top photographers this month. Richard’s image can be found along with the other competition winners on the opening page of our website. All the competition entries will be uploaded to our website in due course.
Critiquing / Editing Workshop:
Tuesday, May 26th
Masham Town Hall / Small Hall
7:00 for 7:30 - 9:30
£3 pp, light refreshments
If you are able to attend and would like to offer a photo to be critiqued by the group please email the photograph to me or bring one along on a USB flash drive.
The aim of this group is to enable each member to improve their photography by gaining greater insight and understanding through the questions raised, and the observations and suggestions offered by those in the group. A photograph that didn’t turn out well, or as you had hoped, can be valuable in this type of activity.
We can view our photos using our projector and screen, and the photographer can carry out simple editing as we go (if desired). For example, when viewing an image it will be easy to experiment with cropping, exposure, or modifying parts of it.
The workshop will definitely go ahead! You do not have to share a photo for critiquing unless you would like to. Offering your questions, observations and suggestions as a member of the group is a really valuable contribution.
MPC End of Year Party (Formerly Barbecue)
Sue C and her partner Paul have kindly offered to host our end of year party in their garden. Here are important details:
Date: Tuesday, July 7th
Time: 6:30 for 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Cold buffet, £15 per person, guests are welcome
Please see Tom's full email for directions and postcode
Note: Please bring along portable chairs! Thank you.
Please pay Gordon or Clare (cash please!) at our June 2nd meeting, OR you are welcome to pay by BACS:
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Please email Gordon to let him know if you have paid by BACS and the number of tickets you have paid for.
Thank you!
Can you help out?
1. We are hoping that a volunteer will step forward to assist with our monthly competitions by receiving and compiling our photo entries into a slide show for use by the competition judge and for viewing at our meeting.
David, Margaret, and I will make sure that our volunteer has a thorough understanding of how to do this. We will also continue to support you until you are comfortable with the process. If you would like to give this a try please let Margaret know. You will need a device (tablet, computer) and an email address - that’s all! Many thanks for considering this.
2. Would you enjoy helping out with providing the Masham Community Office with information about our guest speakers and club activities? This is a role that can be undertaken at home and would take a couple of hours each month. A device and email are the resources needed. If you have interest and would like to explore this role a bit further please let me know. The Community Office staff member you would be working with is really nice, and very helpful - it could be a very enjoyable role for someone!
3. Can you offer your help to any of our hard - working coordinators? It would be terrific if Andy (workshops), Margaret (outings, competitions), Bill (exhibitions), Janice (catering), Clare (website), and Tom (equipment + stuff) had backups, substitutes, and / or help for special events. If you can help out a bit please make contact!
Don’t Forget About Breakfast!
Margaret reminds us that our next breakfast will be on Tuesday May 26th at 9:30 at The Old Station Cafe!

By Email 08/05/2026
Hello MPC Members and Friends,
I hope all is well. A great turnout of twenty-five members and friends enjoyed a wonderful presentation from professional television stills and freelance photographer Helen Williams. Helen shared a captivating account of her career path from leaving university in the late 1990’s through to her work as a freelance photographer today.
She experienced challenging but very valuable professional opportunities at the start of her career that provided her with a useful grounding in the profession. Early on, she had eye-opening experiences when undertaking photography assignments for major newspaper and magazine publishers. She discovered that her many efforts to get a good photograph of a well - known person could sometimes be used with a misleading, possibly untruthful, sometimes inappropriate news story. Since she had no control over how her images would be used, she decided to discontinue with this career path, a difficult but courageous decision and one worthy of much praise for her integrity.
Helen's tough decision, along with her talent, grit, and determination, resulted in an excellent opportunity to work for ITV as their in-house stills photographer. Helen was assigned to photograph actors and scenes connected with many familiar TV shows including “Heartbeat”, “A Touch of Frost”, “Emmerdale” and others. Eventually she left the security of this position to become a freelance photographer where she found continued success working as a stills photographer for television, but also expanding her professional repertoire to include portrait photography. Working freelance enabled her to compete at the highest national levels in her chosen sport - trithalon - and also raise a family.
Helen’s presentation was really enjoyable and very informative as she modestly shared great photographs to accompany valuable insights into the life of a professional TV stills photographer. Helen is a gifted speaker and photographer who provided us with an exceptional presentation.
Many thanks to John for bringing Helen to us, to Clare for her excellent Vote of Thanks, to Janice for another excellent refreshment break, to Bill who collected a near - record £34 from our raffle ticket sales, to Helen Williams who arrived early and set our 20 chairs (I tried to stop her but couldn’t), to all who assisted with setting up and cleaning up, and to Margaret, Andy, John and Jayne for providing us with updates and reminders of upcoming events.
I hope to see you at our next meeting on Tuesday, May 19th.
With best wishes,
Tom
MPC Outdoor Portrait Workshop: Tuesday, May 12th, 7:00 for 7:30, Masham Town Hall
Please bring along your camera and if possible a portrait lens. Mobile phone camera users don’t worry, your phone will likely have a portrait lens!
After meeting in the Committee Room we will walk to St. Mary’s to work on taking outdoor, natural light portraits. Guests are always welcome, £3 pp, refreshments will be available.
MPC End of Year Party: Tuesday, July 7th, 6:30 - 8:30, Sue C’s Home in Pickhill
Sue is arranging for a cold buffet to be served to us at our end of year party. Please pay in £15 per person to Gordon or Clare (using BACS or cash) by Tuesday June 6th.
Please can all attendees try to bring along a folding chair or two? Sue and partner Paul have a dozen outdoor chairs but we will need additional seating.
The annual Humour Award results will not be shared at this event as in the past. We will, instead, share these results at our first club meeting in September.
Humour Award Competition Correction! Entries to the Humour Competition can be photographs taken at any time! There is no time restriction as there is on other club competitions. Your photos can be of any age / vintage!
Directions for travelling to Pickhill and Sue’s home will be provided closer to the time of the party.
Jayne F’s “Ear To The Ground”:
At our meeting Jayne highlighted a number of interesting opportunities for photographers taking place over the coming weeks and months. Jayne kindly listed them, copied below.
You can search online for more details relating to these events if you are interested in attending any of them. If you get stuck and need more information or assistance you are welcome to contact Jayne or me.
Events:
17.05.2026 Masham Young Farmers' Tractor Run
24.05.2026 Black Sheep Tractor Run
20.05.2026 Fearby and Healey WI is running a coach trip to Beamish. All are welcome. Departs Masham Square 9am. Seniors £33, Youngsters £40, includes coach and entry. Tel Nicola 07963676935
Proctors Coaches are running trips to all over Yorkshire if anybody prefers to travel by coach and save on fuel and parking etc
Sundays May to August, 14.00 to 16.00 Ripon Spa Gardens A full programme of musical events including very different styles, all free.
Regular sightings of otters at Nidd Gorge, there is parking there.
06.09.2026 Scarborough Sunday Parade 1am onwards, South Cliff.
People being encouraged to dress in Edwardian / Victorian dress to commemorate 400 years of Scarborough being a Spa town.
Group photo in the Italian Gardens at 11.15am.
In the afternoon the Spa will host an orchestra.
May 26th One-Off Workshop: Photo Critiquing Session, Town Hall, 7:00 for 7:30 PM
Following on from our photo walk and critiquing session with Tom Marsh we are planning to hold another critiquing session on the 26th.
It’s important that you let me know if you are planning to attend this workshop by Tuesday the 12th, if you haven’t already done so.
If you would like more information about what we’ll be doing please email me. Thank you.