This was the last meeting of 2025 and, as usual, we had a longer break to allow for some more socialising and sharing some “finger food” brought in by the members attending.

Erick Espinoza presented a TTT on how to submit materials for publication in the Viewfinders Magazine. He briefly described the guidelines for submissions of articles and photos, before explaining where articles and photos should be sent and when articles or photos will appear in the Magazine depending on when they were submitted.

The “main course” of this meeting was the Viewfinders challenge on “monochrome shapes”. Nineteen digital photos and eight prints were submitted. A wonderful collection of photos by Viewfinders members! Our guest judge for this challenge was Luk Vander Plaetse (https://www.lukvanderplaetse.com) , who was kind enough to comment on each one of the images submitted, giving his opinion about how the images submitted could have been even better.

As is always the case for Viewfinders challenges, there were four prizes to be awarded. Luk was asked to select a “bet overall”, best projected image” and “best print”, while all those attending the meeting had the opportunity to vote for the “people’s choice”. Janet Wishnetsky’s photo of the stitches on her knee was chosen by Luk as “best overall”, with Miguel Angel Vilar and Michael Stierle winning the prizes for “best projected image” and “best print” respectively. Finally, a photo by Peter Löffler won the “people’s choice” award,  ith honourable mentions for Miguel Angel Vilar and Bogdan Florea. 

Alun then closed the meeting and thanked everyone for their participation, in paticular Luk Vander Plaetse for the work he did on the judging.

Alan Waldern delivered a “TTT” on “Learning resources”. He described his own evolution in photography and how he learned different aspects of it, from camera operation to composition and processing photos. He then described briefly the resources available, including manuals, magazines, web-based tutorials, training courses and participation in photo walks, workshops or organised photo trips. He concluded with a discussion on expectation management and how we all need to set our expectations according to the time we can invest in learning.

We then had a presentation by Anja Strelec, who briefly described her professional activities in videography and photography . She then showed examples of her personal work on street and minimalist photography. Having the possibility to travel extensively for work, she takes all opportunities to work also on personal projects, mainly doing street photography in parts of the world where that would normally not visit a tourist. She showed some of her photos from cities in Africa, Asia or America, as well as a series of photos taken in Brussels during the Covid pandemic and a short series of minimalist photos.

Anja concluded her presentation by mentioning her workshops and, in particular, the one she is organising for members of Viewfinders, on mobile phone photography.

Alun then closed the meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.