Member Bios
Group Admin
Ian Ledgard, GMPSA/b, EFIAP/p, AWPF, GPU-Cr5
I am a retired Chartered Forester having spent my career mainly with a private company in the UK. I live close to the small market town of Llandeilo in South West Wales a scenic area with strong historic connections.
My interest in photography was stimulated by my father who taught me how to develop and print shots taken on a Box Brownie in a makeshift darkroom in our home. Through the years I have progressed through black and white, colour transparency, E6 home processing and Cibachrome printing. I took up digital in 1999 scanning prints and negatives for a couple of years before taking the plunge into digital capture. All my work has been in Photoshop and I print using Epson printers.
I have always been more interested in producing images than in the latest piece of kit and so all my equipment is relatively modest. I firmly believe in taking pictures which I enjoy; if they are also appreciated by others then that is a great bonus. I am an Associate of the Welsh Photographic Federation (AWPF). I joined PSA in 2005 and gained MPSA in 2013 and GMPSA in 2018. I hold the Excellence award from FIAP and have just gained it's Platinum level(EFIAP/p). I have also gained a five crown award from Global Photographic Union (GPU-Cr5).
I regularly judge club and inter club competitions throughout South Wales and atInternational level have judged in Wales, England, India and Ireland.
Gunter Haibach
I am married and live with my wife Avril in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada - a beautiful wine region of Ontario.
After 15 years of striving to produce "WOW" images, the "Beat Goes On" - still striving, learning, and doing. Thanks to local camera clubs, mentors, PSA for helping me on this journey.
Have no favourite subjects, but lean towards the creative and non-traditional aspects of artful images. My favourite photographic outing is in local forests - while not necessarily producing "WOW" pictures, more importantly, it feeds my soul.
My equipment includes an Olympus Mirror-Less camera, 2 Zoom lenses and a Macro lens. I do my post-processing with P.S. Elements and NIK and Topaz plug-in's.
My other hobbies include reading and sports (watching!). Up until recently I was also a bit of a political junkie, however, for sanity reasons I've weaned myself off it. I have already apologized to my grandchildren for the world we're leaving them.
Looking forward to participating in the group.
Robin Mellor
I live in North Devon, in the southwest of England. I am retired and enjoy gardening, writing, walking - and, of course, photography.
I become hooked on photography in college when someone showed me how to develop and print black and white photographs. My first camera was a Yashicamat 6x6 and, all these years later, my preference is still for monochrome and the square format - but I do shoot colour as well. The Internet has revolutionised sharing photos and entering exhibitions, but I still like to make prints and for this I use an Epson SC P600 printer.
I use a Nikon D800 with a variety of lenses, and a small Nikon A; increasingly, I also shoot using an iPhone 15 Pro.
For processing, when I moved from the darkroom, I initially used Photoshop and Lightroom but have become dissatisfied with their subscription model so switched to Affinity Photo 2 (one off payment) which is excellent.
I enjoy photographing most subjects, but not sport or natural history, and look forward to seeing your pictures and sharing some of mine with you.
Bob Wills
I am a Retired US Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer. I worked on both missile and gun fire control systems, learning electronics along the way. I also picked up a great deal of Information systems knowledge and an MIS degree, which I used to work for the state of Washington. My service-related injuries and Parkinson's Disease finally made me retire completely. I could no longer actively play sports, so I found my hobby in photography.
Dorinda and I both enjoy the challenges and camaraderie in PSA and especially the Digital Dialogue Groups. No greater joy have I than to be associated with my wife and Tom Pickering.
Joan Field, FPSA
Joan Field and her husband, George, lived in New Jersey for 26 years before moving to CA, George's home state, in 1989. They spent four + years in Danville (near San Francisco) and another four years in the Los Angeles (Orange County) area, when in 1997 they returned to Danville.
Joan has been a member of various camera clubs since 1984 when she purchased her first 35 mm camera. The Contra Costa Camera Club is her current affiliation, but she has also been a member of the ACES (Anaheim Camera Enthusiasts Club) in Orange County, CA and the West Essex Camera Club in New Jersey. Joan had been a member of several slide circuits since 1985 and is now administrator of the Digital Imaging Print Circuit #4 and DD circuits #21 and 15. She was the chair for the PSA Newsletter Contest for five years.
She is a generalist in photography. Today her primary interest is in correcting and creating images using Photoshop and printing, her favorite being monochrome.
Her digital camera is the Nikon D750. She uses an iMac 27″, Bridge and Photoshop 2021 nd also has an Intel based PowerBook Pro. Her lenses include the Nikkor 29-300 VR and the Rokinon 14mm wide angle lens, an 80-400 mm Nikkor VR, a Tamron 150 - 600mm lens and a 90 mm Tamron macro lens.
She received her FPSA in OIctober of 2021.