EPS Wednesday Meetings - Overview

1970s

More of the Same

Some of the Society’s activities of the 1960s continued throughout the 1970s.  

G E Williamson of Glasgow, who had been demonstrating new equipment to EPS Meetings since 1951, continued to regularly bring:

"A car load of equipment for EPS members to see and handle".

Landscape and travel photography,  black and white and colour processing all remained popular subjects for lectures.

Richard Cormack who gave a lecture in 1968 entitled:

-  One Square Furlong of Edinburgh  

returned in 1975 to talk on:

-  One Square Furlong of St Andrews.

New Topics

Audio-Visual shows began to replace the earlier Lantern Slide shows and ciné films.

Manufacturers were no longer sponsoring lectures.  Instead, EPS was host to a speakers from the Royal Photographic Society including:

-  1974:  Penny Plane, Twopence Coloured  [Edwin Appleton]

-  1975:  Tuppence Coloured -  [J R Trottle]

New specialist subjects discussed in the 1970s included:

-   Crystals through the Polarising Microscope

-   Photography in Conservation

-   Subterranean Splendour

Many enthusiastic amateur photographers were giving lectures and showing their slides to EPS.  It was not always easy to work out the scope of the lecture from its title:

-   Wrapped in a Veil of Yellow Gauze

-   Photographic Alphabet

-   Photographic Eccentricities

-   Fantasmagorical Gallimaufry

We have to thank EPS Member Oliver Leach for the last of these titles. 

Lectures from EPS Members

Oliver Leach and his wife, 

Marjory Leach, gave lectures to EPS throughout the 1970s.  They lectured on a wide range of subjects, including:

-   Solarized Slides

-   Extracts from the EPS Archives

Gracie Alison, EPS Secretary, specialising in portraiture, who gave her lectures regularly from 1955 to 1982.

George Cruickshank, EPS Treasurer,  specialising in landscapes, including many scenes from France.  George lectured regularly from 1950 to 1982.

Marion Boron, including derivative printing (1957 to 1986)

Richard Cormack, landscapes and cityscapes (1968 to 1991)

John Knight, organiser of the EPS International Exhibition, worker in bromoil, lantern slides and latterly colour slides.  

John  gave 26 Wednesdays Evening lectures to EPS between 1940 and 1976.  There was even one given after his death:

-  Photography - taped by the late John T Knight (1982)

Technical Lectures

Fewer lectures in the 1970s were devoted to technical advice and processing .  Was this because cameras were becoming easier to use, and processing more straightforward?  

The processing lectures included some advanced subjects - requiring, no doubt far more time and effort than their digital equivalents today:

-  Colour Printing from black + white negatives [Tom Bradley]

-  Lith, Line and Luck [Jim McDougall]

-  The Derivative Processes in Colour [Marion Boron]

-  Colour Printing by Tone Separation and Other Fiddles [J Callender]