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Sue O'Connell and Peter Brisley: Travels towards the edge

12/02/2020
This was another excellent presentation from two outstanding and well qualified photographers. Often when the club hears talks from photographers who share their holiday photographs, it's often an incentive to follow in their footsteps and visit the same countries. But on this occasion, I can't see many of us booking a few weeks in Mongolia or Iran any time soon. That's not because the photographs we could take wouldn't be very different or uplifting - it's just that there might be a deficiency of creature comforts along the way.
Sue was anxious to point this out in her first half presentation which provided plenty of insights into the politics, culture and people of both Mongolia and Iran. To obtain her images it was necessary to rough it more than a little. However, her shots of Mongolian families and the amazing eagle hunters were reward enough. And along the way we were given insights into Mongolian diet (very fatty), Mongolian infatuations (the Dalai Lama and snuff though not necessarily taken together), Mongolian living conditions ('gers' - or yurt where it is essential to walk in a clockwise direction) and Mongolian language ('Nookhoigoo' - meaning 'Call off your dogs' - which I will offer to our postman should he have any faraway deliveries).
In the second half we were first taken west as Peter showed us stunning images from the Pantanal Wetlands of Brazil and then east to India for some colourful people shots and street photography. Peter's shots of exotic birds, jaguars and square-face capybaras and later the tribes of Gujarat were certainly well worth turning out for on a rather depressing night of UK weather.