Celebrity Profile

      I cannot remember a time when photography was not an all consuming passion. A native of Pittenweem in Fife, I took my first picture aged 11 using a Box Brownie camera. Like many others at that time I made contact prints using the garden shed as a primitive darkroom and hand colouring the results. I worked for the local photographer during school holidays which encouraged my interest until leaving school in 1960 and going to work and live in Dundee. Just as I was about to leave the local photographer's, we had a smash and grab raid and this allowed me to purchase at low cost a Kodak Retinette 1A which had been in the window but was not worth grabbing! The 35mm format allowed me to start colour slides and I immediately went down to the harbour and took some slides!

      Not knowing anyone in the city, I joined the Dundee PS in order to make friends. When the first competition came along, with great daring I entered what I thought was the best of the harbour pictures and was amazed how much more the judge, Fred Duncan ARPS, saw in it than I had seen at the time! This was tremendously encouraging and made me realise that there was more to this photography lark than just pressing the button. At that time Dundee PS owned their own premises and had three darkrooms in the basement. I spent many evenings at the club learning the craft of printing as well as simply using the lounge for discussion evenings, a group of us used to share the shilling for the gas fire! Eventually I helped to run the beginners classes. Usually four nights a week were spent at the Club!

      I was elected to the Committee at my first AGM and served as Membership Secretary and also on the Fund Raising committee until my marriage in 1966 meant a move to Hitchin where Gerry worked for Harkness Roses. (Gerry and I met on holiday in Dubrovnik in 1965 and married exactly a year later having been together for a total of five weeks in that time - no wonder our families were having kittens! But I'm glad to say it worked). On the Dubrovnik holiday I realised that I needed a longer lens and afterwards switched to a Praktica camera with a 50mm lens plus a 135mm lens. In fact I always tease Gerry that I married him to carry it for me! He has been carrying my gear ever since.

      In 1966 Hitchin CC did not exist and we tried several local clubs before settling on Shillington & District CC in April 1968. Funnily enough I joined the committee at the 1969 AGM! I served as Treasurer, President and Chairman over the years and finally Programme Secretary, and Gerry did a number of years as first Competition Secretary and then Programme Secretary. In 1996 we were both elected Hon Members of Shillington. Gerry continued to serve on the Committee and I completed 20 years as Chairman and 18 years as Programme Secretary, some of them concurrently. Meantime Hitchin CC had been formed and we both joined that as a second club where I was elected an Hon. Member in 1994.

      In 1988 my mother moved from Scotland to Hitchin to be nearer us if she needed help - she had her own flat and was a keen bowler so soon had her own friends around her and was often more help to us than we were to her! But in the summer of 2004 she was diagnosed with cancer and we wanted to have her live with us. This was not going to be possible in the house we had in Hitchin so it prompted a move to Shropshire as that would also be nearer my sister who lives in Cheshire. Unfortunately it took a while to sell our house and as a result Mum died before we could make the move. But the decision had been taken to go and we decided that it would still be a good idea and we finally managed it in May 2005.

      Wellington was chosen because that is the home of Wrekin Arts PC where I had lectured annually for many years and we felt we had friends in that club. Obviously living near enough to also join Smethwick PS was a bonus so once again we have two clubs. A very definite decision was taken to stay off committees!! Although we are both willing to help whenever we can.

      I joined the RPS in 1974, achieving LRPS in 1975 and afterwards switching to the Olympus OM system which was much smaller and lighter than the Praktica. ARPS was gained in 1979 both these distinctions being awarded for colour slides. It was another 15 years before I got around to applying for Fellowship. To be honest I had started several panels but never completed one before being lured into another idea! and all the Committee work was getting in the way! It was at the opening of a personal exhibition in Bedford that Hugh Milsom and Trevor Fry discussed a couple of the pictures and asked if I had any more at home like them and "if so you have a Fellowship there"! I knew I had taken a lot so set about organising and printing them. Fellowship was achieved at the first attempt in April 1994 with darkroom colour prints in the Visual Arts - Pictorial category. The pictures were details of the landscape softened with Vaseline on a filter. In celebration I bought a Canon EOS5. In 1998 I bought a computer and started digital imaging from scanned slides until in 2004 I bought my first digital Canon - the 10D. A little later I progressed to a 20D and last year bought a 40D. I have kept all three bodies and now use the 40D with my favourite 75 - 300mm zoom lens, the 20D with my 170 - 500mm Sigma zoom and the 10D for my other lenses. This avoids changing lenses too often. I should make it clear that we don't carry all this as the Polymyalgia I have had for the past five years means that mobility is restricted and I now work to the maxim that anything more than 100 yards from the car ceases to be photogenic! I love Photoshop and would not consider returning to the darkroom.

      Meanwhile in 1985 I was awarded the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain Award for Meritorious Service to Camera Clubs (APAGB) for my service to the Federation. I served as Events Secretary for the East Anglian Federation for 24 years from 1975 to 1999, including wearing two hats during a two year spell as President in the mid eighties. During the same period I also organized the EAF Judges Courses but gave that up on becoming President. In 2004 I was surprised and delighted when the APAGB was superseded by the J S Lancaster Medal (HonPAGB) for Exceptional Service to Photography.

      I started lecturing and judging for the EAF in 1974, moving swiftly up the panels until I achieved appointment as a PAGB judge in the late 1980s. I am now in demand throughout the country, having undertaken several lecture tours of Scotland, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Wiltshire, Lancashire, Devon, Cornwall and Sussex. I have also judged in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Algarve as well as many of the British National and International Exhibitions. I am no longer judging at Club level simply because since 2000 I have been supported by Permajet in the supply of my papers and ink and I feel that as much time as possible should be devoted to showing my Permajet prints and so I only lecture now. I have been doing 50 clubs a season but am now trying very hard to reduce that as we get older.

      I have been entering National and International Exhibitions since 1982, and achieved AFIAP, the first step on the ladder of FIAP distinctions in March 1997. I went on to gain EFIAP in 2000. I also hold the British Photographic Exhibitions 4 Crown Award. In 2006 I got around to applying for Distinction (DPAGB) and succeeded. To be followed a year later with the Masters (MPAGB). My greatest photographic honour was an invitation to membership of the London Salon of Pictorial Photography in March 1996.

      During the 1990's I ran Photographic Holidays in France. This all started because we hired a gite in the French Pyrenees and got on very well with the English owners. Margaret had just bought Hedley a camera and she asked me to give him some tips on using it. I suggested they come out with us for a day and I would show him in situ so to speak. By the end of that day Margaret had decided I could teach and she suggested running photographic courses from their premises where they have a large farmhouse as well as the gite we had hired. She volunteered to do all the cooking and Hedley to drive the minibus. We took six photographers a year out there in October for a number of years until I got the Polymyalgia. It was great fun as well as hard work and we had a lot of laughs. It is an ideal area with so much variety of subject matter that there was something for everyone. Many of the participants took up my recommendation of the Manfrotto Joystick head for the tripod after trying mine. I also encouraged the use of a home made diffusion filter which became known as a "defroyser" filter. This superseded the Vaseline I used in my Fellowship but with much less mess!

      My favourite subject remains landscape and I specialize in pastels. Nowadays the pastels are expanding beyond the landscape and really I will take any subject that catches my eye and I think will make a good print. I have been very fortunate over the years to have had help and advice from many excellent photographers and this is why I continue to lecture and to share the knowledge that I have gained. Perhaps the most rewarding was an invitation to join Eyecon, the select group formed by the late Adi Sethna whose encouragement and advice was of tremendous importance in my digital photography. The group continues to be a source of inspiration.

      I cannot imagine life without photography - it is a passion which is as strong today as when I first started. There is a compulsion to take and show pictures and although I appreciate all types of photography, my main interest is still in landscape and holidays are arranged specifically to find pictures. France remains my inspiration and we have visited many parts although we also enjoy Scotland, Ireland, Italy and Holland. Of course I am especially grateful to Gerry for all his support of my photography as I could not have done it without him.

Irene P. Froy