St Ives Photographic Club
Founded in 1972, the St Ives Photographic Club is a friendly and active club in Cambridgeshire, dedicated to the encouragement and development of photography in the community.
The club meets at 8pm every Tuesday evening between September and April in the Free Church, St Ives. We also have an active programme of outside events from May to August.
Our autumn/winter programme of meetings offer a lively mixture of talks from both amateur and professional photographers, practical evenings, internal competitions, practical demonstrations of photographic techniques and equipment, and competitions with other clubs. To see more details of our programme, look under the Programmes section.
Our summer programme is focussed on a series of outdoor activities across a range of photographic subjects.
Members are keen to share their expertise over a wide range of photographic techniques and subjects, from natural history and landscape to creative work.
If you are interested in photography and live in St Ives or the surrounding area, this is the club for you and we welcome new members who enjoy photography at all experience levels, young and old, amateur and professional.
Image of the Month
The image of the month for October, as chosen by the Club President, is “Salt pan, Trapani, Sicily” by Stefania Van Lieshout.
Upcoming Meetings for the 2025-2026 Season
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Fri31Oct2025Sat01Nov202510:00 amSt Ives Free Church
Our members' exhibition will once again be held at the Free Church on 31st October2025 and 1st November 2025. All members are encouraged to exhibit their work. This is a great showcase for the efforts of our members.
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Tue04Nov20258:00 pmSt Ives Free Church
Smart Shooting part 3 - dare to focus
We are delighted to welcome Bob to St Ives for his talk "Dare to Focus".
Bob is a professional PhD zoologist, a qualified teacher, a highly experienced photographer, Fellow of the RPS and naturalist passionate about his work and sharing his observations of wildlife with others. He firmly believes it’s not good enough just to say “do this” but rather to say “this is how you do this”.
Bob is a wildlife photographer but his talk is equally applicable to of all other genres and is one of a series he was invited to develop to help people in their journey from the ordinary to the extraordinary and taking their photography to a new level. Each talk covers a particular area and this one covers the often-considered difficult area of auto focus. It covers fast moving subjects but also the principles and important development and approaches that will increase your success. Bob firmly believes that we too often consider autofocus has been solved especially on the latest mirrorless cameras but whilst there have been massive improvements its technique and an understanding of the principles, none of which are very complex, these are what is required to succeed and Bob will take us through them.
Bob has many years experience teaching all levels of photographers on many different cameras in workshops, 1-1’s and African Safaris. He promises us that we will leave this evening with a better understanding of what can be done, how to do it and fired up to take our cameras out and masted autofocus.
https://naturesphotos.co.uk/camera-club-talks/.
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Tue11Nov20258:00 pmSt Ives Free Church
A fun evening where members' images are displayed in pairs on the screen with an audience vote for the image which goes through to the next round. We will then invite members to talk about the images they have presented.
Committee will be available on this evening to give advice to anyone who is unsure of the rules of the Quartet and George Dellar competitions or needs help with an entry.
Header Image © Steve Laws