Shaftesbury Camera Club Exhibition 2018

Shaftesbury’s Photographers Give Us Their Best Shots

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Twenty years ago, serious photographers had to invest thousands of pounds in expensive and often bulky equipment in order to win awards. Today, the high quality lens in the smart phone in your pocket allows anyone with an eye for composition to compete with owners of more costly and cumbersome kit.

You’ll see what can be achieved on a range of cameras during the Shaftesbury Camera Club’s Annual Exhibition.

“We’ve had extremely good work submitted on smart phones. They are perfectly acceptable,” says the club’s David Lampard.

David will discover which images are being displayed just a few days before the start of the week-long exhibition at Gold Hill Museum.

David expects that 25 members will each display up to six prints. That limit prevents over-enthusiastic entrants dominating the exhibition. He reckons that there’ll be around 100 works on show.

Some of the entrants could be considered semi-professional. “We do have members who sell their work,” David adds.

You’re being encouraged to view the entries and vote for your favourite three photos. The overall winner will then be determined by the public poll.

The Shaftesbury Camera Club was formed eight years ago and David says he’s pleased with the steady growth in membership. “We had 40 people last year but there are 46 members attending now,” he says.

David is hoping that the annual presentation will pique interest and bring additional recruits. “A few people usually join us following the exhibition,” he says.

Club members travel up to 12 miles to attend the twice-monthly meetings on the second and fourth Thursdays at the Royal British Legion Club in Shaftesbury. There’s an additional session during months containing five Thursdays.

You can judge the photographers’ creative talents at Shaftesbury Camera Club’s fourth annual exhibition in Gold Hill Museum’s Garden Room between Saturday 5th May and Friday 11th May.

Buddhist Monks Create Religious Artwork for Shaftesbury Fringe Weekend

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You’ll be able to watch Buddhist monks create beautiful patterns and perform traditional Tibetan dance in Shaftesbury this summer.
The eight men are visiting from the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in India, which was established when the order was exiled from Tibet in 1959.
Over the course of five days from Monday 25 June the visitors will use millions of grains of brightly coloured ‘sand’ to create an intricate ‘Mandala’ design on a tabletop in Gold Hill Museum.
Tour organiser Jane Rasch says the work is deeply symbolic. “It’s made as a meditation, a sacred circle,” Jane says. “At the centre is the image of a Buddha represented by a thunderbolt. It’s made is to take away any negative effects which may come about as a result of taking a life, whether intentionally or unintentionally.”
There’ll be a talk about the Mandala process at Gold Hill Museum at 6.30pm on Wednesday 27 June.
The monks’ work will then be destroyed, to promote the principle of “impermanence and non-attachment,” at 11.30am on Monday 2 July.
Jane says spectators are often visibly moved as the painstakingly created vibrant colours are swept together into a pile of grey dust. Each grain is considered a blessing and visitors will be able to keep a small bag of the sand.
During their stay, the monks will also perform the masked dances and ‘extraordinary chanting’ associated with the Tibetan New Year festivities at Shaftesbury Town Hall at 7.30pm on Thursday 28 June.
The monks previously visited Shaftesbury during Gold Hill Fair. Jane says that they are keen to return in time for the town’s Fringe festival before heading to the world-famous Edinburgh event.
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