Words from BIPP President Jon Cohen expands on his Presidential Awards

CEO’s column 2 Martin Baynes reflects on 2021 and looks forward into 2022

Words from BIPP President 3 Jon Cohen expands on his Presidential Awards

National Awards 5 View the selected images for the BIPP’s National Print Competition

Incidental Moments 22 A career changing assignment for a photography graduate in Edinburgh Seizing Opportunities 26 LBIPP Iain Waterston steps up to a new challenge on the world stage at COP26 this October

Qualifications 30 We look through members panels from the final BIPP Qualifications of 2021

In Conversation with Gary Hill 32 We chat and get to know the BIPP‘s Overall Photographer of the Year, Portrait Photographer of the Year, and recently qualified Fellow Judging A-Z 46 Paul Wilkinson pulls apart the world of judging

New Directors 59 Meet the new editions to the BIPP’s Board of Directors

Looking Back: FBIPP Michael HalletT 65 We look back on the career of a teacher, photographer and internationally published photographic historian

the Photographer is published four times a year by the British Institute of Professional Photography, The Artistry House, 16 Winckley Square, Preston, Lancashire PR1 3JJ

T: 01772 367968 E: info@bipp.com W: www.bipp.com

CEO: Martin Baynes

President: Jon Cohen Directors: Emily Hancock FBIPP (Chair) ABIPP Karen Massey ABIPP Monir Ali ABIPP Barrie Spence LBIPP Johanna Elizabeth ABIPP Andrew Coe FBIPP John Miskelly (Treasurer)

Regional Chairs: Barrie Spence ABIPP (Scotland) Argha Dutta LBIPP (North West) David Taylor FBIPP (Midlands) Andrew Younger LBIPP (South West) Irene Cooper ABIPP (Yorkshire) Monir Ali LBIPP (South East) Editor: Joel Hansen, editor@bipp.com

Advertising: Tel 01772 367968 E-mail: admin@bipp.com

UK Subscribers £20, EU £40, Rest of the World £50

ISSN: 0031-8698. Printed and bound by Magazine Printing Company, Hoddesdon, Herts

Neither the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) nor any of its employees, members, contractors or agents accepts any responsibility whatsoever for loss of or damage to photographs, illustrations or manuscripts or any other material submitted, howsoever caused. The views expressed in this magazine are the views of individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the BIPP. All advertisements are accepted and all editorial matter published in good faith. The Publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, that any particular product or service is available at the time of publication or at any given price. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, or stored in a retrieval system, or broadcast, published or exhibited without the prior permission of the publisher. This magazine is the copyright of the BIPP without prejudice to the right of contributors and photographers as defined in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Registered at Stationers’ Hall, Ref B6546, No. 24577. © BIPP 2020

MARTIN BAYNES

Dear Member, Welcome to the Winter edition of the Photographer. As we come to the end of the year, I need to start by saying how proud I am of what we have achieved this year. Even with the pandemic, which is by no means over, as an association, we managed to navigate through it and support our members in many ways.

We rebuilt our website and will continue to refine it. We have started making contact with new sponsors. The creation of the Inclusion Committee, a new magazine editor, a return to The Photography Show which was one of the busiest and most successful shows we have ever attended.

For the first time in a lot of member’s memories we have made a profit and in the last three years we have gone from a 120K loss which, without the recovery of funds, would have been a 220k loss to a 29K loss in 2020, to profit of 32K this year, and this is a real milestone. This is with a loss of some members and a downturn in revenue due to the pandemic. We still managed to be profitable.

The road ahead of us is still long, and we are only at the start of this journey, but the journey has begun. Two weeks ago we combined our Directors meeting, RCC meeting, AGM, National awards and Christmas bash. A member pulled me to one side and said, for the first time in a long time they felt a positive vibe in the room and there was a real buzz. I am excited to make further progress next year to make the Institute relevant, give value to its members and become the place for professional photographers to be the best they can be. Thank you to all who have been involved this year, to the many volunteers who give up their valuable time for free, from the board of directors, the regional chairs and their teams, judges, the inclusion committee, it is truly humbling. We welcome three new board members, Johanna Elizabeth, John Miskelly, Andrew Coe and the return of Emily Hancock for a second term. We also say thank you to Dr Mark Hall who has stepped down. A really big thank you to Tony Freeman who served on the board in the 80’s and came back and completed his second term on the board, stepping down in November this year, a true gentleman that could make me laugh on even the darkest day.

Scott Johnson who has done a fantastic job over the last couple of years as our chair of judges, thank you so much for your commitment. We welcome Dr Paul Wilkinson into the chair of judges role, we plan to overhaul the whole qualification, judging and mentoring process within the next year, to go alongside of this, work will be done on updating the Articles of Association which John Miskelly and a team will be rewriting and modernizing; more on this next year.

In this edition; we celebrate the amazing talent of our members who got involved in the National Print Competition, there are some beautiful images. I thank everyone who entered and to all 96 Bronze award winners, 59 Silver winners and 8 Gold winners, Congratulations. The images can be seen on our website. A big shout out goes to ‘The Judges’ for their professionalism and commitment and giving up 2 days of their time .

In November we managed to squeeze in another qualification day, with two Fellows, two Associates and one Licentiate qualifying, beautiful panels as you will see in this edition. Also two members qualified with the Federation of European Professional Photographers.

For all of us these last three months have been crazy, if you could see the mess in our office this is testament to what has happened and how busy everyone has been, over the next few weeks we will be having a massive tidy up, getting ready for a bigger and better year in 2022. Whatever your plans over the Christmas period, try to enjoy some time with family and friends. We look forward to welcoming you to an event very soon. Lastly, I want to thank my team in the office, the dedication and late evenings in the last three months has been fantastic, Joel and Sharron….Good Job! The office will be closed from the 23rd of December until the 4th of January; if something is absolutely urgent then please email me martin@bipp.com. JON COHEN

Meeting members at some of the regional awards evenings has been a real highlight, such a wide range of genres, ideas and opinions made it really enjoyable and definitely educational. For many it was the first opportunity they’d had for some time to meet and chat to other photographers so the conversations flowed well into the late evening. It’s not easy organising events in a still uncertain pandemic landscape so much thanks and appreciation for all the hard work by our regional chairs in making them happen.

End of October saw another group of members assembled for the superb SE region weekend event, SE in as much as Monir Ali was the prime mover and organiser but people arrived from just about everywhere for an amazing mix of talks and some highly entertaining evening conversation.

Most recently it was so good to see our Institute investing in a top class and really successful National Awards event and exciting to be able to present two Presidential Awards. The first a member award, richly deserved by Chris Wright who had been absolutely instrumental in keeping everything - including the magazine - going during lockdowns and beyond. The second, an industry award to Jeff Heads from Digitalab for his many years of dedication to helping photographers achieve the best possible print quality.

This leads me to where I’d like to take this column, less about what I’ve been up to and more about the greater photographic industry, introducing Jeff’s award I said “we’re lucky in the UK to have some superb imaging labs, many regarded as world class, they don’t just print but advise, adjust and help realise your vision in print, never more so than when there’s a portfolio to print for qualifications”. So for the next few column I’ll focus in on our imaging labs.

Since Jeff received a Presidential Award it would be rude not to start with Digitalab. Set up by Percy Fountain in 1949, the lab has seen some seismic industry changes over the last 70 plus years. Jill Roe, the current owner is his grand-daughter and it’s fair to say that Jill has been responsible for the technology investment needed to make the massive transition to a high quality digital operation (happily though they still process film!). It’s not only about the digital technology either, a vital component is all the social media and online activity necessary to communicate with a growing and often younger customer base, both in the UK and increasingly further afield.

Jill works with a great team, if you see Digitalab at a show or at an online event you’re likely to meet Emma, Alex, Calum, Jill and of course Jeff himself, beautifully captured at work here by Gary Hill FBIPP.

Jeff has been with the lab for 21 years and has been producing stunning prints both optically and digitally for much of that time, he’s always in big demand for consultation about images for an exhibition, portfolio or qualification panel and is always generous with his time and his advice.

Oh and I did manage to spend some time up in the Lake District early in December, it was beautiful but well below zero up on the tops. Some landscape photographers stay up in the mountains for hours, sometimes days, waiting for the perfect light, definitely a hardy breed!

Lastly if you’re anywhere near Impressions Gallery in Bradford 5th Jan to 26th March 22, do check out the Through Our Lens: Growing up with Covid 19 exhibition, some amazing work by young photographers documenting their world in the pandemic.

Image above: Digitalab Team