The evening's meeting was a presentation from John Perriam from both Exmouth and Exeter camera clubs.

John has shown us some of his exceptional creative work before but this time his emphasis was on 'having fun with photography' by using creative software techniques and just trying something different. And what a terrific and inspiring presentation it was. Flawlessly presented, John mixed AV sections with examples of how he created some of his often bizarre and unusual images. If the weather is so bad that you can't go out to photograph anything, then find a dark space like your garage and try shooting a whirling torchlight or burst a few water bombs to see what effects you get.

Then there were numerous examples of street photography and one poignant AV of images linked to the song 'Face in the crowd', as well as a cod (did you see what I did there?!) Blue Planet AV sequence of deep sea photography with alien species conjured up in John's garage.

Finally John showed how you could turn fairly standard landscape images into something more artistic with a little background texture, maybe a white wash and of course a suitably cropped flock of birds. Everyone can now be a John Constable or a Van Gogh but you also need to ensure you have a good catalogue of your images so that you know where to look for the parts of a picture you need. If you missed this evening and John returns to us, as I hope he will, then be sure to put that date in your diary.