2025 Year end overview

Yes, time flies, we are already a few days into 2026. So let me wish you all a Happy New Year and may all your photos be happy ones!

Without doubt 2025 has been a very good year for our club.

The highest number of Visions members ever (48 I think), a weekend away trip, and our first ever exhibition (still on until February 6th) at Bonnymuir Green Community Trust.

We have quarterly social evenings at various restaurants, always well attended with surprisingly little chatter about photography or camera equipment.

We also have our quarterly photo competitions on a theme, one of those was an actual print competition. Those who did’t own a printer were helped out by members with a printer or they had theirs printed via an online print service.

This year we also succesfully applied for a lottery grant and thus were able to replace our TV screen with a larger and better quality screen. The old one which Visions part owned was donated to the centre and moved to another room. We have also replaced our ageing laptop and bought a colour calibration device so members can make sure that the screen they use has accurate colours. That helps a lot if images are to be printed, so they look as close as possible to how we see them on our laptop/PC monitor.

A matte cutter was also bought from the grant money so we can cut mount board to the exact size of the printed image. This came in handy when we prepared for the exhibition at Bonnymuir Green as we framed all the photos ourselves.

We do strive to have a mix of talks by inspiring photographers, practical evenings for food or macro photography etc. Outings are often preceded by a talk evening at Ruthrieston about the things we are going to photograph. We have also started to do quite a few impromptu outings for things like Milky Way shoots, sunrise, sunset golden and blue hour shoots and moonrise shots. These are often initiated by Dave Lynch, who is a wizard with Photopills and Windy apps to work out when and where to be to get the shot.

We have also initiated collaboration with Sport Aberdeen to document various sporting events.

Action from a Sport Aberdeen event – DL

We have taken photos for Bonnymuir Green Community Trust, documenting the changes of the garden throughout the seasons, and at an event where we ran a portrait photo booth.

Bonnymuir Green gardens – Pamela Adam

Bonniemuir in a sphere – Eileen Rodgers

2025 month by month

January – We started the year with a joint zoom session with Westhill. A talk by Guy Edwards on Creative Landscape photography. We had not one but two members nights where new(ish) members give a talk about their photographic journey. Always a great way to meet new members to the the club. We ended the month with a critique night to select our GE entries.

February – We went out to take pics of the Spectra light festival in Aberdeen, and met up with Deeside Photography Club in Aboyne. A talk about flash photography by Neil Gordon., a professional photographer from Aberdeen. A presentation on Phone photography and we finished the month with a Smorgasbord evening of Apps, Portrait and Still Life. Street photogaphy at Dundee with a bonus impromptu wedding photo session.

Spectra – Stephen Lynch

Visit to Deeside Photography Club – DL

Neil Gordon’s presentation on flash photgraphy

iPhone photography talk by Dave Clark

Still life as part of the Smorgasbord evening -Pamela Adam

Having a good time at the Smorgasbord evening – DL

Street photogaphy outing Dundee – Andy Reader

Dundee wedding – Linda Di Maio

March – an evening of Light painting at the beach, a social night out, the AGM and Spring competition results and judging.

Visions at the Light painting event – DL

Social night out – by the waitress at Amarone

April – Traffic trails in Aberdeen, Wildlife talk by Norman Watson, Dundee street photography outing, and a fantastic talk by Kevin Fidler on travel photography in India, and of course we attended Grampian Eye judging in Fraserburgh.

The Traffic Trailers – Stephen Lynch

The Visions Dundee street photo gang – DL

Kevin Fidler giving his excellent talk on his time in India

One of Kevin’s photos

The Grampian Eye Crew – Good event even if we only came 7th.

May – We went to Bullers of Buchan to hunt for Puffins.

Puffins – Lynda Gordon

The Critter man visited us with various small animals including a Tarantula.

Critter man visit – Kirsty Russell

We had a great talk by Mark Reeves on Architecture followed by a team competion judged by Mark some weeks later.

Architecture talk by Mark Reeves

June – A talk on coastal photography by Dave Lynch.

Coastal Photography talk by Dave Lynch

Another great social night out. We went to the Isle of May for more Puffin photography, and the judging of the Architecture team competition.

Our social night out organised by Linda Di Maio

Photo trip out of Stonehaven

Visions ready for the Isle of May departure – Lynda Gordon

July – A macro photogaphy shoot in the hall, a talk about Printing by Tim Jones from Photospeed.

The Tall Ships race visited Aberdeen this year so we all went to take photos of the magnificent sailing vessels and the Red Arrows at the beach, sadly curtailed by the haar rolling in.

Red Arrows – RR

Tall ships – Douglas McKay

We visited of the historic waterpowered mills at Birse.

At the saw mill (some of us had already left)- DL

Birse turning mill – Bob Taylor

And ended July with a food photography shoot in the hall.

David looking forward to eating the subject of his photo.

August – Treasure hunt at Stonehaven where we had to try and take photos that fitted with keywords. Well organised by Susan Gordon.

Treasure hunt wrap up party at Stonehaven – Stephen Lynch

A great talk via Zoom on Street Photography by Ravi Ranasinghe from Sri Lanka. Fantastic colourful images. We reviewed the images from the Stonehaven treasure hunt, had a members night

One of the colourful images from the Zoom talk by Ravi Ranasinghe.

September – Photo session around the golden/blue hour at Greyhope bay with some fantastic light, lead by Stephen Lynch. Yet another social night out, a review of the images taken during the golden/bloue hour outing at Greyhope Bay. And an evening where we reviewed in small groups our initial selections for GE. Always good to get some constructive advice on which images are best suited and what possible edits to improve them.

Greyhope Bay – Bob Taylor

October – We went away for our East Lothian/ Northumberland weekend based in Berwick upon Tweed. Our club member Iain Cridland now living in Houston did a talk about his photography there, titled ” A Stranger in a Strange Land.”

Little Pappasito’s – Iain Cridland

And we did a practical session on macro photography in the hall, another memebrs session where new(ish) members gave a talk about their photography. Judging of the print competition took place and an excellent talk about composition by Graeme Youngson concluded October’s events.

A photo from our October weekend trip. Dave Lynch

Trying to line up the moon and the rock

November – Fun evening with the review of our East Lothian photos with a compositional buzzword Bingo, well put together by David Lynch.

East Lothian review and Compositional Buzzword Bingo night.

An evening in the hall playing with oil drops photography.

What is this? An evening of oil drop photography.

Fun shot of the actual photo being taken – Nataliia MIhotina.

Here is one by Charitha Wijesiriwardana

December – The first event thius month was Linda Di Maio’s safari talk which she made into a social event with drinks and nibbles. Fantastic photos made for a great evening.

Linda and husband Mario next to her photographic gear she brought along. That Nikon 400mm f/2.8 is a beast! – RR

Partners were invited to come to the evening. – DL

Just one of the many photos shown by Linda.

On Friday the 5th our exhibition opened at Bonnymuir Green Community Trust.

Our exhibition at Bonnymuir Green. RR

Opening night of the exhibition. RR

Photo of the year results and judging

On the 11th some of us got up to catch the sunrise at Dunnottar castle, encouraged my Photopills wizard Dave. It didn’t quite work out, just a bit too much low cloud.

That was all the red we saw that morning….RR.

And our Social night concluded the Visions 2025 events.

Our Christmas meal at the Globe – Andy Reader

2025 Gallery

And finally your website editor’s selection of photos posted by Visions members in 2025. In no particular order and chosen just because I liked them. Some people post a lot more than others, and that is reflected in the amount of images from just a handful of authors. And boy it takes days to scroll through all the photos! Must be in the thousands. Please shoot more and post more in 2026!