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Photo albums from Chiltern Society members that illustrate why the Chilterns mean so much to them.

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Chiltern favourites from the thousands on the website. They are chosen because the images trigger favourite memories. It’s a PhotoGroup pictorial Desert Island Discs

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Well over a year ago our PhotoGroup Website Editor suggested that it might be interesting to photograph something local throughout a year, documenting the changing light and seasons. It needed to be pretty local, to allow for frequent visits, so I opted for Marsworth reservoir, a place I have known and loved all my life. There are many good viewpoints, but I chose the group of poplars that fringe the water.

I have always admired Monet's series of paintings of haystacks and of Rouen cathedral in different lights, so these were my inspiration. Covid did intervene for a few weeks when we were unable to leave home, so I had to plug that gap the following year to complete the album. I ended up with over 300 photographs, so selecting favourites took some time. It has been a delight.

The photographs were taken in 2020 and 2021.

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Cliff Buckton specialises in nature photography. He used a Canon 70D with a 100-400 lens and a Canon G15 compact to take these photographs (in 2015 and 2016 unless otherwise stated).

Stocker's Lake and Maple Lodge Nature Reserves

Both reserves are in the Colne Valley close to Rickmansworth and Junction 17 of the M25, straddling the Hertfordshire/Hillingdon border. Stocker's Lake is one of the oldest former gravel pits in the area, the gravel having been excavated in the 1920s and 30s, much of which went to build the old Wembley Stadium. The resulting 40 hectare (100 acre) lake is managed as a nature reserve (http://www.hertswildlifetrust.org.uk/reserves/stockers-lake) (http://www.fosl.org.uk/) and hosts over 60 species of breeding birds in summer. In winter it is a good place to see migrant ducks escaping the harsh weather on the continent, plus the occasional rarity at any time. There is a good path around the entire lake, five bird hides, and the added interest of the nearby Grand Union Canal with Stocker’s Lock, Stocker’s House and Stocker’s Farm, which has been used as a location in numerous film and television programmes.

Click here to see location of Stocker's Lake on a map

Maple Lodge Nature Reserve is a wetland area created from two old gravel pits and a former sludge settlement area from the neighbouring sewage works. It is managed by Maple Lodge Conservation Society (http://www.maplelodge.org).

Click here to see locaton of Maple Lodge on a map

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David Iles photographed Chilterns life and landscapes in the 1980s. You can see more of his pictures in our "Chiltern walks - Ridgeway Path" album: find it under "Special collections" on the Albums page.

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This section contains some of the 500 pictures given to the Chiltern Society by Fred Mitchell in 1997. They were taken in the period between 1959 and 1976 and cover a wide area of the Chilterns. The photographs, some taken more than 50 years ago, are now showing their age but are of historical interest. Clicking on these pictures does not increase their size.

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This section contains some of the pictures given to the Chiltern Society by John Morgan. They were taken in the period between 1955 and 1974 and cover a wide area of the Chilterns.

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Having seen Maurice Wooller’s flower photos on this website, Bill Banks writes in October 2006:

“During the sixties I was a schoolboy in Windsor and a member of the Windsor Camera Club. Maurice Wooller - or 'Mr Wooller’ as he was known - was a very gifted amateur photographer and one of the club's most distinguished members.

I well remember a talk he gave entitled 'Photographing wild flowers'. He explained that these photographs were taken on a simple Praktica 4 camera, fitted with a bellows attachment and a homemade electronic flash/reflector set-up. He always used Agfa CT18 slide film. Even by sixties' standards, this equipment was modest but the results are stunning. It was difficult to believe (and still is) that these are flash photographs, when the balance between daylight and flash is so perfect and the results so completely natural. All the exposures had to be calculated by hand, taking into account the available light, the extension of the bellows and the flash to subject distance. It would be a real challenge to replicate these photographs, even with the equipment available to us today.

To see today, photographs I last saw projected on a screen 40 years ago has been a real privilege.”

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Roger Allen writes — I first fell in love with drones when I saw how stable their video footage was. At that moment in time I had no interest in flying them, just the incredible cinematic footage they could create. From there I mastered how to fly them and get that footage, and in recent years how to edit video and eventually how to take and edit photos. I’m still completely fascinated every time I take flight as the world looks quite different from up there. The photos here are from a stabilised drone that can hover motionless in the air to capture photos that would otherwise be impossible to get from the ground. In 2021 I'm learning to fly FPV which is different: my FPV drone can accelerate from 0-100 kmph in 2 seconds with a top speed of 140 kmph for video capturing the fastest of sports.

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Guy died on 27 January 2013, aged 87. He was involved with the Chiltern Society’s PhotoGroup from its earliest days, helping to establish it when he took on the job of secretary in 1991. He guided its development with John Wellsman and Don Brooks and was chairman from 2003 until he retired from the position in 2012. During those years the Group’s archive grew from an initial collection of 200 to more than 5000 photographs of the Chilterns, a key resource for the Society.

Born in North Harrow, Guy attended the Harrow County School for Boys and went on to study physics at Cambridge and Birkbeck College. At Birkbeck he joined the climbing club where he met his future wife, Betty. During his working life he was in the computer industry until the 1970s when he changed course and taught music, an abiding interest since his student days.

One of Guy’s lasting legacies was to establish and help maintain the Chiltern Society PhotoGroup library. Donated collections, showing aspects of Chilterns life during the past 50 years or so, formed an historic base for the library. In recent years it grew considerably, benefiting from the many hundreds of photographs taken by members following photoshoots in specific locations, or from individual projects. Today the archive covers around 175 locations and, backed by an easily accessible website, is recognised as the most comprehensive published pictorial record of the Chilterns. Guy contributed more than 300 photographs to the library; click here to see them.

Guy was always keen to promote PhotoGroup members’ work and he took the lead in arranging exhibitions of their photographs, originally displays of prints around the Chilterns, and later online. His initiatives included publishing a small magazine for members and the Puzzle Picture feature in Chiltern News. Guy recognised the importance of providing a social forum for members: winter indoor meetings and summer pub lunches on outings became increasingly popular.

Guy’s involvement with the Chiltern Society’s PhotoGroup, its Planning Group and the Executive Council will be long remembered.

The photographs of Guy’s funeral were taken by Terry Cherrill at the Chiltern Woodland Burial Site near Beaconsfield. A number of Society members attended including those in the first group photo.