Tenby camera club wins annual battle with 152 points

TENBY and District Camera Club held its annual Battle on September 24. The competition comprises seven top clubs from South Wales entering eight digital images. These images were judged cold (i.e. not seen in advance) by Martyn Pinches and what a task he had!

He is a very experienced judge who was very impressed by the high standard of entries covering a wide variety of genres.

Full marks of 20 points were given to six individual entries, two of which were from Tenby members Dave Bolton and John Whitehurst.

Tenby and District Camera Club won the competition with 152/160 points.

Winner of the Best Image of the Competition was ‘The King & I’ by Dave Bolton of Tenby and District Camera Club.

An excellent buffet, provided by TCC members, was enjoyed by everyone. Thanks go to everyone who contributed and helped.

Thanks also go to the awesome authors of stunning images from Tenby and the other six clubs, and special thanks to everyone who had travelled considerable distances to support their clubs and the Tenby and District Camera Club Battle.

On September 10, Steven Clary presented ‘My Story and Drones’ at Tenby Camera Club. It was his third visit to the club and the large audience was thrilled again.

The club enjoyed an awesome talk full of facts, stories, laughter and skill. Steven’s style of presentation is pacy and engaging so the evening flew by almost as fast as one of his drones.

Steven is Carmarthen born but has travelled the world with his work as a photographer and film maker. Since attaining his degree in Film and Media at Trinity St Davids, he has covered motor sports, surfing, base jumpers, snow boarding, skiing and mountain biking - to name a few genres. Several fantastic images were shown.

Steven’s expertise now is drone photography and filmmaking. Club members were informed and enlightened to all the developments in this type of photography and video. It has moved apace in technology with camera quality, control and speed.

Steven went into detail describing the types of drone, what they look like, what they are useful for and costs.

DJI Drones were illustrated with the gradual improvements they had, from being a basic drone to a camera drone like the DJI Inspire series.

A super section of the talk was on FRV Drones. FPV stands for First Person View, meaning the pilot controls the drone while seeing a live video feed directly from an onboard camera through specialised video goggles .

These are faster and very agile drones with more control over throttle and angle of flight with top speeds.

The audience was shown the work that goes into producing advert campaigns, for instance ‘Faster Always’ Atomic skies in Austria 2024.

Of course, accidents happen and Steven had a collection of mishaps and crashes which made members gasp! It demonstrated clearly the skills which have to be acquired.

His recent work was talked about, including the World RX Hong Kong 2023, World Rally Cross South Africa 2023, Formula E - Jeddah Saudi Arabia 2025, Loheac & Lydden Legend Car Racing 25/26, BMW 3 Series Areplog Sweden Winter testing of prototypes 2025 and finally MotoRapido Duceti /HMY 2026 Superbikes.

After many years of travelling for work, Steven wants to do more local projects so watch out for this! Keep on eye on his TikTok posts and enjoy his skills in photography.

In a welcome return to the club which was very well supported . John Archer Thompson, who is a coastal ecologist living locally , captivated the audience on September 17 from the start with a fascinating tour of the stunning floral world that we, in Pembrokeshire, are lucky to have on our doorsteps.

In ‘The Flowers of the Pembrokeshire Coast and Beyond’ John’s photography brought to life his journey through all the classes of the botanical world in Pembrokeshire. Starting with lichens, fungi and ferns then onto the more familiar flowers seen on cliff tops, woodland and sand dunes, he gave clear explanations why a plant thrives in a particular place. Sunny, shady, boggy or dry, there is a plant making its home .

Members were taken through the seasons from Wild Garlic and Bluebells in Spring, Campion and Thrift in summer, Gorse and Knapweed in autumn and Primroses and Violets in winter; something to be found on walks through the year.

John is also well known for his stories of fables and myths, and there were so many associated with the floral world. Some were rather implausible but very comical and entertaining.

Explanations of the ecological aspects, medicinal uses, rarity and oddities were easily understood. John’s knowledge of all the Latin names of the species was spectacular !

As always, John’s talk was interesting, filled with facts and photography to involve and fascinate.

Tenby and District Camera Club meets at St Florence village hall every Thursday night during the season, which runs from September 1.

Doors open 7pm for a 7.30 start. Admission for visitors is £4 cash.

For more details, visit www.tenbyanddistrictcameraclub.org .