Bristol-based photographer of all things, Simon Caplan, returned to the club this week, and led a very relaxed, enjoyable evening, full of high-quality images and humorous anecdotes.

Describing himself as “a usually highly sociable animal”, he nevertheless retreats into (hopefully) deserted woodland areas for his own well-being, finding a wealth of subject matter to develop and practise his use of depth and perspective, texture, colour, shape and form.

Simon’s entertaining and engaging talk, entitled “Lost in The Woods”, explored the beauty of the ancient, moss filled woodlands on our doorsteps, helping us to see and to use creatively the natural frames and the lines afforded by branches and winding pathways, as well as to recognise the unique personalities within the tree species themselves.

His images entitled Dragon Tree, Goddess of the Forest and Never too Old to Dance were very memorable, and highly effective in supporting his call to “embrace the chaos, and make sense of” the unique environments in which we can, and should, occasionally lose ourselves.

Simon aptly demonstrated, within the bigger picture, how light can lead the eye, and how colour renders an otherwise ordinary image extraordinary. He also makes the most of the intricate details of the forest floor in ferns and fungi, sticks and seeds, many of which he collects and uses later, when creating on table tops and light boxes, the still life images for which he is so well known

Already avid collectors of textures for later use in processing images, members were intrigued by Simon’s imaginative use of bokeh as well as creative macro crops of diseased or miner infested leaves for the same purpose, and many made a mental note to investigate the work of Tracey Calder, whom Simon named, amongst others, as a major influencer.

Jenny Short, Norton Radstock Photographic Society