AGM & Convention

Ruth Grindrod is landscape photographer living in Norfolk. Her work has been recognised throughout the UK and further afield . She was the overall winner of Scottish nature photography awards in 2019 and a LPOTY winner in 2015 and 2021. Her website lists her other awards. She is a firm believer in interpreting the landscape as it presents it self to the photographer, rather than seeking to make all photographs look similar in style. Nonetheless her style is particularly distinctive. Her special love is coastal photography. "My vision my practice” will examine what inspires Ruth and then looks at how she approaches her work in the field. Ruth is a very experienced and entertaining speaker who seeks to enlighten, inform and entertain when presenting to the public.

www.ruthgrindrodlandscapephotography.co.uk

Leigh’s photography is mainly thematic, often using dramatic lighting in wilderness situations, or monochrome in the man- made landscape. Much of his work is about the Urban landscape, depicting a changing industrial landscape or portfolio work in far-flung locations. Over the past 40 years he has travelled in the USA to make images on the empty Prairies or in deserts, to Greenland, Iceland, Norway , the Baltic, the mountainous areas of the UK to find winter landscapes or the exact opposite in Australia. Trips to Cuba, India and Georgia, has given opportunities with a reportage style of portraiture. To avoid being forever known as 'Mills & Gloom', recently work has been about street characters, humour or aspects of absurdity, making images at rock concerts and tackling architectural abstracts. He prefers to work alone, influenced by the environment he grew up with, and the photography of Bill Brandt, John Gray, Michael Kenna and the artists L.S.Lowry and Atkinson Grimshaw. Lyricism and narrative have become increasingly important in the documentary work he is now producing, linking influences such as J.B. Priestly, Jonathan Raban, Beryl Bainbridge alongside songwriters like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Roger Waters, and the composer Vaughan Williams and Sibelius.

He has produced four books of his pictures – ‘Shadows of Change’, ‘Five Essays’, ' Editions' and very recently ' Liverpool, a place apart' which depict the various aspects of his photography as outlined above. He is a double Fellow of the RPS, and holds FIAP and PAGB distinctions, has taught photography for Gloucester and Cheltenham colleges, for Jessops , Permajet and on landscape workshops, both in the UK and abroad.

www.leighpreston.co.uk