Latest news with #RoyalPhotographicSociety
Time of India
12 hours ago
- General
- Time of India
British deputy high commissioner Kolkata & IBSA promote wildlife conservation through photography
The British Deputy High Commission Kolkata and the Indo-British Scholars' Association (IBSA) recently collaborated to highlight wildlife and our living planet through the powerful medium of visual storytelling. The event, held at the British Club Kolkata on June 10 underscored the critical importance of our fragile planet and the urgent need for conservation efforts. It emphasised the vital role of wildlife photographers in documenting animal movements, studying habitats, and illustrating the impact of climate change and human influence on their existence. Reflecting on the initiative, Dr Andrew Fleming stated, ' Photography, and by extension film, is a powerful medium to capture different themes and inspire change. Wildlife is one such example and has been a vehicle of success for the conservation of many of the world's best-known endangered species, including the Royal Bengal Tiger. But this is just the tip of the iceberg—threats to our natural world continue to mount. Plastic pollution, this year's World Environment Day theme, is a scourge for land and sea creatures alike. Some scientists predict that by 2050, there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. So my message is that we must do more to tell the stories of environmental impact in all our collective work and encourage more young people to follow in our footsteps .' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like New Cars, Best Deals! carxplore Learn More Undo Simon Hill, president of the Royal Photographic Society, UK, also remarked, ' For over 170 years, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain has championed photography as a medium that informs, inspires, and helps shape public opinion. In an age of overwhelming ecological danger, photography has become one of the most powerful tools in the conservationist's arsenal. From documenting environmental collapse to stirring empathy for endangered species, a single photograph can translate the most complex scientific realities into immediate emotional truths. Photographs transcend language barriers to resonate with and impact a global audience. At its most effective, environmental and conservation photography doesn't just bear witness—it galvanises action. Through its awards, publications, and bursaries, the Royal Photographic Society recognises, honours, and supports the globally important work of photographers who are causing the world to take notice and take action. '
BBC News
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Ludlow Victorian who 150 years before Photoshop altered images in Leamington
A photographer who pioneered techniques to create detailed images by combining multiple negatives is being celebrated 170 years after he set up his first studioHenry Peach Robinson was one of the most famous characters of his age, said photographic historian Michael Pritchard, with his work winning awards and selling widely. "He really showed photographers at that time that photography could be art," he added. Born in Ludlow, Shropshire, in 1830, Robinson studied drawing and painting while working in a bookshop in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and he opened his first portrait studio in the town in 1855. He is being remembered by the town's photographic society, with his story also highlighted in a book by a local history group."By 1857 he was winning medals and awards for his art photography and that carried on right the way through to the 1890s", explained Mr Pritchard, a former chief executive of the Royal Photographic Society. Robinson used "combination printing," he said, creating a single image from multiple negatives. Using this technique allowed independent control of different parts of the scenes in the finished images. "It's something we do today in Photoshop relatively easily but in the late 1850s and mid-19th Century it was a pretty groundbreaking technique," said Mr Pritchard."He became an absolute master of it and this was how he was able to create absolutely groundbreaking and stunning pictures". In one of the earliest examples of his "pictorial" photography, Fading Away, Robinson combined five separate negatives to produce a scene showing a dying girl surrounded by her family. The image became incredibly popular despite Robinson's technique and subject matter, which was considered too morbid by some. "As ever with that sort of genre photography of the time, there's a deeper story around it and you know all sorts of issues around how the Victorians pictured death," Mr Pritchard said. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds a copy of the image and they said on their website that the photo appealed to Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who bought a print and issued a standing order for every major composite photograph Robinson would make. The photographer was also a founding member of the Birmingham Photographic Society and produced a number of books. "In terms of his importance for photography, I think he's probably a little bit forgotten these days but at the time he was still seen as a very influential figure and someone that had made a massive impact on photography", added Mr Pritchard. In 1864, when he was 34, Robinson was forced to give up his Leamington studio due to ill health from being exposed to the toxic chemicals used at the time in moved to London and continued to work until his death in 1901 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent."He was one of life's interesting characters," said Peter Chappell, the outgoing chair of the Leamington Photographic Society. "He was entrepreneurial, he was commercial but at the same time he was artistic and he was promoting photography as an art form," he added. The society recently marked the 170-year anniversary by inviting celebrity photographer Rankin to the town for an event, which attracted more than 150 people. "That link about the world's top portrait photographer of the 1800s living and working in Leamington Spa and we got the world's top portrait photographer of current times actually coming to the town - that binds the whole story together," added the outgoing vice chair Mark Godfrey. Follow BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Iris Newbery obituary
My mother, Iris Newbery, who has died aged 99, was involved in several environmental and conservation projects in Essex and Cambridgeshire. Taking up photography in her 40s, she combined her new skills with a keen interest in wildlife, gradually specialising in butterflies, moths and dragonflies, fungi, lichen and galls. As a member of Loughton Camera Club she won many awards, and achieved the distinction of becoming an LRPS (licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society), then later an ARPS (associate). A founder in the early 1980s of the Essex and Cambridge branch of Butterfly Conservation, she undertook surveys and conservation work and organised field trips for members. Among the group's successes was the restoration of chalk grassland on the Devil's Dyke, an Anglo-Saxon earthwork near Newmarket, where hundreds of chalkhill blue butterflies can now be seen each August. Another of Iris's interests was volunteering at Copped Hall, near Waltham Abbey. The imposing 18th-century mansion, on the edge of Epping Forest, was burned to a shell by a devastating fire in 1917. When in 1993 the Friends of Copped Hall (now the Copped Hall Trust) formed to save the site from development, Iris became one of a small group of volunteers, led by the architect Alan Cox, who cleared rubble and plant growth from the ruin and its extensive grounds and stonework. The project has expanded, with separate teams working on the walled garden and the earlier remains of an Elizabethan mansion on the same site, and has stayed volunteer-run, opening to the public for occasions such as tours, study days, open-air theatre performances, and jazz evenings in the cellars. Iris's photographs form part of the restoration archive, and for many years she produced the members' newsletter. In 2004, working in the walled garden, she was introduced to the then Prince Charles when he visited the mansion and planted a tree in the grounds. Iris was born in West Ham, east London, the eldest of the four children, and the only daughter, of Beatrice (nee Damon) and Percy Cooper. Her father was a railway fireman, later station foreman at Stratford, where he served throughout the second world war. Iris's education was disrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939 and her evacuation to a farm in Dulverton, Somerset, where the local school had only one class, made up of children aged from five to 14. On her return to Dagenham she learned shorthand and typing and took office work in order to make a financial contribution to the family. In 1946, she married Ron Newbery, a Lancaster navigator in Bomber Command, who went on to become a chartered accountant, and they made their home in Epping. After his death in 2015, Iris spent her final years at Richmond Retirement Village in Witney, Oxfordshire, where, during the Covid-19 lockdown, she shared her love of the natural world by sending a daily photograph to other residents. She is survived by two children, Rod and me, and by her brother, Bob.
