We’re delighted to announce our first on-line only annual exhibition is now open to the public. We hope we’ll be able to return to the Hebden Bridge Town Hall next year, but for now we’re making the most of the current situation by expanding the number of photographs on show from members, as there are no physical space constraints. To make things easier to browse we’ve split the exhibition into themed categories; Open, Nature, Portrait, Travel, Monochrome, ‘Scapes and Local.

Every year we invite the public to vote for their favourite three images – due to the change in format this year we’ve changed that to allowing you to vote for your favourite image in each category giving you 7 votes in total if you wish to use them all. Voting will remain open until the end of September and results will be published in October.

Visit the exhibition.

As our exhibition is usually your first chance to grab a copy of our popular Hebden Bridge calendar, we’ve decided to setup an online shop this year if you want to get your order in early. The calendar will also be available in all the usual venues around town. As a word of warning, we’ve reduced the number we are printing this year due to the uncertainties caused by Coronavirus, so they will be in more limited supply than usual. If you’re keen to get one, don’t wait!

As we let you know at last week’s meeting, we have been closely monitoring the rapidly evolving COVID-19 virus situation and how it might impact on our programme.

In the past week several members have, understandably, expressed reservations about attending meetings on Wednesday evenings. With social distancing now recommended by the government and with some of our members being in the higher risk category, we have taken the decision that the responsible action is to cancel all meetings up to the end of April when we begin the summer break. 

This is immediate and there will not be a meeting this Wednesday 18th March. Hopefully when the Club programme begins in September things will be back to normal and we can once again get together on a weekly basis. 

In the interim, the committee are thinking of ways to hold part of the bi-monthly competitions remotely, i.e. judging PDI’s from home and maybe recording comments that can be uploaded to the web. Prints present a different challenge, but possibly we can look at moving them to September and increase the number of entries per member. The Summers walks are under review but it’s unlikely these will go ahead. 

Nobody is more disappointed than we are at having to make this tough decision, but we hope you understand and agree that it’s the best course of action in the exceptional circumstances the World finds itself in at present.

Kind regards,

Judith Baron, President.

Bill Pilkington, Programme Secretary / Vice President