Lucinda Grange, adventure photographer – photo: Sue Brown 

It was wonderful to be able to meet up again after the disruption of the past two years. Our seminar got off to an excellent start with a presentation by Arena member Ted Sturgeon of three projects from his personal work – a set of high key images of a dancer floating in a swirl of dazzling white fabric, portraits from reenactment events, and some rare pictures of heavy snow in Bexhill on Sea.

This was followed by adventurer and urban explorer Lucinda Grange showing alternately dizzying, vertiginous city-scapes shot from on high and dark claustrophobic subterranean  explorations beneath. Fabulous images and definitely not for the faint hearted! Documentary photographer Kieran Doherty took the afternoon slot, showing his work from Kosovo, a moving essay on Wooton Basset repatriations, and a very sensitive study of his elderly parents during lock-down.

After the formal presentations of the day the venue was given over to seminar attendees to show their photographs, thirty mini displays in total, a wide variety of styles, techniques and subjects

Sunday began with a beautiful and atmospheric exploration of trees and woodlands through the seasons by Paul Mitchell, another Arena stalwart. Unfortunately our guest speaker for the morning was taken ill and had to cancel, but we were rescued by Vanda Ralevska, also an Arena member, who stepped in. She gave us a delightful presentation of several projects that she has been working on – misty mornings in the deserted parks of covid London, seaside resorts, and quirky things found on her country walks.

Our final speaker of the weekend was another documentary photographer, Andrew Testa. He gave us quite a different view of Kosovo, focusing on the plight of the refugees and the spill over of the war into Macedonia. On the gentler side he gave us the story of the Moken “sea gypsies” of the Surin Islands and on the home front we saw his work on hunt saboteurs, anti road protests, and the pressures on NHS staff during covid.

All three of our guest speakers showed a daring and courageous spirit, wonderful and challenging photographs, and an awe inspiring commitment to their chosen field of photography that we could only wonder at.