club history

Haslemere Camera Club

Haslemere Camera Club has very recently celebrated its 50th year anniversary with an exhibition at the Haslemere museum attended by local dignitaries & press.

The article below formed part of a welcoming speach given by our club chairman Mr Clinton Blackman ........

" The camera never lies and neither, of course do the photographers, however I would advise you to study the small print when it comes to photographic creativity !.

You’ll find that even the simplest looking of images on show within this website comes from, and draws upon, many hours of learned technique in both film and now digital formats.

The essence of being a good photographer is the skill to look at the same people, scenes or objects that everyone can look at but to see something that no-one else does. And having seen it, to capture it in a photograph. That is the high ground to which we aspire and we hope that any of you wishing to join will share the same vision.

I hope you wont mind if I reflect on some of the changes that have occurred in the photographic world during the last 50 years or so since the Haslemere Camera Club was founded.

Our origins go back to 1910 when the Haslemere Photographic society was founded at Haslemere's own museum. Some years later world war two interrupted the life of the Photographic society but it was re-formed in 1952 once the austerity of the post war years had faded.
Since then we have been in continuous existence, with some ups and downs as you might expect but nonetheless we have survived well even crossing the digital barrier to the new future of photography.

Apart from the formation of HCC, 1952 has turned out to be a pivotal year in the history of photography because it marked the start of democratisation of photography. Before the war quality cameras were built in Europe and were in real terms very expensive indeed, however 1952 saw the launch by Nikon of the Nikon F SLR which marked the foundation of the modern era of mass-produced, high quality Japanese cameras which have become increasingly affordable. So whereas photography was once a pastime for the professional or otherwise wealthy people it has now come within the reach of almost everyone.


Let’s look at some of the ways modern cameras have helped to bring image making to everyone. Probably the most important, but least obvious development is the tremendous improvement in lens design, especially zoom lenses as a result of computer design techniques. Nowadays zoom lenses are every bit as good as prime lenses of 30 years ago, and these self-same designs have paved the way for modern compact and digital cameras. Taking the silicon chip out of the computer and putting it in the camera has given us automatic exposure, automatic focus, image stabilisation and most recently of course direct capture of images digitally, with no need for film at all. Kodak’s famous advertising slogan of the early 1900s was "you press the shutter, we do the rest" What they didn’t say was unless you only took very simple subjects, the results would be rubbish. Now when you press the button, you can be pretty sure that the results will be technically quite excellent in a very wide range of circumstances. But there is still no guarantee that you would want to look at the photographs the next day, the next week or let alone in 50 yrs time People, places, events, objects are the enduring subjects of photography, but what has happened over the years is that photographic fashions have changed in pretty much the same dramatic way that hemlines have risen and fallen and risen again. Nowadays we don’t see formal portraits heavily lit and neither do we see table-tops. But when equipment was difficult to use these were rewarding subjects to take.

The increasing affluence of society and the freedom modern equipment gives us means that subjects and locations are becoming increasingly exotic. I can now confidently expect that Club competitions will regularly contain our members work from at least three different continents, sometimes more. In fact Antarctica is the only place that appears to have eluded us so far. This certainly would not have been the case 50 yrs ago But what of the future? Will photography continue to be popular, will Camera Clubs continue to exist, will there be a centennial celebration for Haslemere Camera Club I have to say I’m quietly optimistic. We live in a sea of pictures, on TV, in advertisments on the internet and now even on our mobile phones so the human interest in images is certainly enduring, even if many of the images that surround us are not. But amongst all this there is emerging an interest in the past and in classical values.

We now have commercially successful retro style cameras available from Voightlander, Leica, Konica and Nikon. More we also buy retro designed cars and retro-feel kitchens. So there is a groundswell in society against the purely ephemeral and I believe part of this will be the desire to capture images that will be enduring. The skills to do that are what we can help people to acquire. People learn best from people, not from books, so I think this is the future high ground for the Camera Club. It may end up looking quite different from what it does at present but if our underlying message is to help people see where others merely look then we will surely have a good future. And it’s a future that I hope some, many or all of you would like to have a part in." Thank you for visiting our website & please enjoy the work of our members. If you wish to listen, to learn or simply to enjoy, then you are more than welcome to come along to our fortnightly meetings. Dr C P Blackman, LRPS Chairman