The Australian Photographic Society Incorporated Forty to Fifty Years Compiled by David Oldfield Copyright © 2013 Australian Photographic Society Incorporated All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by The Australian Photographic Society Incorporated, Suite 4, 8 Melville Street, Parramatta, NSW 2150 Contents Foreword ................................................................................................................................ iv 1. A Decade of Change............................................................................................................ 1 2. Management and Administration ........................................................................................ 3 3. Image and Australian Photography .................................................................................. 11 4. The Divisions .................................................................................................................... 16 5. Australian Interstate Photographic Competition ............................................................... 29 6. Education Services ............................................................................................................ 32 7. Exhibition Services ........................................................................................................... 34 8. Honours and Awards ......................................................................................................... 36 9. Special Projects ................................................................................................................. 41 10. The Collections ............................................................................................................... 54 11. International Liaison ....................................................................................................... 60 12. Conventions ..................................................................................................................... 67 13. Membership and Finance ................................................................................................ 71 Appendix 1. Abbreviations ................................................................................................... 78 Appendix 2. APS Convention venues ................................................................................... 79 Appendix 3. Presidents of APS ............................................................................................. 80 Appendix 4. Management Committees ................................................................................. 84 Appendix 5. Honours and Awards Results ........................................................................... 87 Appendix 6. APS Awards ..................................................................................................... 89 Appendix 7. FIAP Distinctions ............................................................................................. 93 Appendix 8. APS Honours .................................................................................................... 98 Appendix 9. Membership and Finance................................................................................ 107 Appendix 10. Plagiarism and Ethics ................................................................................... 109 Index .................................................................................................................................... 111 iii Foreword This history of the Australian Photographic Society covers the period from the fortieth Annual General Meeting, in 2002, up to the fiftieth AGM in 2012. This follows on from The Australian Photographic Society Incorporated – The First Twenty-five Years by Heather Howey and The Australian Photographic Society Incorporated – Twenty five to Forty Years by David Oldfield. Chapter headings generally follow those in the earlier volumes but the information contained in the appendixes covers the full fifty years existence of the Society. As in the first volume, photographic honours after photographers’ names have generally been omitted from the text in the interests of readability and avoidance of repetitive details. Photographic honours awarded by APS and FIAP are listed in the appendixes. The primary sources for information were Management Committee minutes and Annual Reports, with valuable additional material from Image magazine and Australian Photography. I would like to thank John Hodgson for providing copies of the minutes covering the period November 2002 to September 2005 and Kay Mack for access to electronic copies of the minutes from January 2006 to August 2007. Thanks are also due to Kay for the chapter on Image and Australian Photography. I have included quotations from the sources extensively so that the reader can hear the past speaking in its own voice. David Oldfield AFIAP FRPS AAPS HonFAPS August 2013 iv 1. A Decade of Change This is an account of the history of the Australian Photographic Society Incorporated, referred to as APS or the Society, from the date of the fortieth Annual General Meeting in 2002 until the fiftieth AGM in September 2012. An account of the first twenty-five years of APS, compiled by Heather Howey has been published,1 followed by an account of the next 15 years by the present author.2 This chapter will summarise the changes that took place in the decade up to the Society’s 50th anniversary in 2012. Perhaps the most significant feature of the decade, as far as the Society is concerned, were the rapid changes that occurred in photographic technology. In 2002, Photoshop 6 was introduced, as an evolution from Photoshop 1 which was launched in 1990. The latest digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras in 2002 were the full frame Canon EOS 1Ds with a 16 Megapixel (MPx) sensor and Nikon D100 with a 6 MPx APS-C size sensor. The internet revolution was yet to change the way photography was used and shared by everyone. The Society was basically still organised and run the same way it had been since it was founded forty years earlier. If you had a residential connection to the internet in 2002 it would probably have been dial- up unless you were lucky enough to have a cable connection from Telstra or Optus passing your capital city home. You could search for information on line by using Yahoo or Google and you could have used Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera or Mozilla as your web browser. If you were into social networking it would have been on Friendster as MySpace didn’t exist until 2003 and Facebook only appeared in 2006. Mobile phones were used for talking! Looking from my privileged position as compiler of this history and as a past President of the Society I can say that the most traumatic occasions in the life of the Society have occurred when it became necessary to find a new Secretary to keep the day to day business of the Society going. You will read in the second chapter that this occurred in April 2004 for the change from Tom Tame to Mervyn Ross, then in September 2005 for the change to Melinda Finnigan and in April 2010 for the appointment of Stella Fava. The appointment of Melinda Finnigan in October 2005 signalled the beginning of a period where use of the internet and improved business practices were implemented to the ultimate benefit of the Society. Chapter four describes the changes which occurred in the Divisions of the Society over the decade. These are the parts of the Society which deliver services to members to enhance their photography. Audio Visual Division was probably the first to experience the changes which digital imaging were making to the way photography was conducted within the Society. Slide Division became a casualty of the swing from slide film to digital imaging later in the decade and ceased to exist by 2011. Countering this, not surprisingly, was the exponential rise of Digital Division. Competition between the State bodies representing camera clubs for the Alan Moran Trophy continued throughout the decade with a name change from the Allied Camera Clubs Competition to the Australian Interstate Photographic Competition in 2006. Education Services had been established in the early years of the Society as a library of instructional materials and audio visual sets that could be borrowed by members or camera clubs. The service was seeing very little use by 2006 and it ceased to exist by 2009, another casualty of the all pervasive internet with its abundant resources. Exhibition Services Subcommittee continued to provide a valuable role in approving and overseeing National and International exhibitions in Australia. There was a trend towards an increase in entries of digital entries and a decrease in print entries but overall the number of exhibitions approved each year was relatively stable. Over the decade there was rapid growth in Digital International Salons with convenient digital upload systems for entries which resulted in a large increase in applications for APS and 1 APS Forty to Fifty Years FIAP Honours as there were now more opportunities to gain exhibition acceptances which could be counted towards these honours. Frequent and substantial changes to the requirements to qualify for FIAP Distinctions did not appear to reduce interest in attaining