Welcome Message from the President of Doncaster Camera Club

While Doncaster Camera Club has been around since 1893, next year, 2027, Photography celebrates 200 years of history since the first “fixed” image in 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. In the next 20 years, pioneers such as Louis Daguerre, Henry Fox Talbot and others developed processes that allowed images to be captured quickly and more easily. Since then, the art and science of photography has moved from a niche artistic form to the point where a large proportion of the world’s population have access to a smartphone and with it, a camera. Everybody can take photographs. whether they class themselves as photographers is a moot question. 

According to Google AI, humanity captured more than 2 trillion, photographic images in 2025. This was a doubling since 2015. The Phototutorial website estimated a growth rate of 6 to 8% growth in the number of images per year since 2022. The estimated overall number of photographic images produced to 2024 is 14.3 trillion. 

Helping to increase this number, the Doncaster Camera Club meets weekly between September and May and the topics of its meetings and photography are varied. This coming year we are having speakers who specialise in nature, architecture, landscape, seascapes, aerial, railways, and other genres of photography. The club organises its own internal competitions and its members take part in other local, regional, national and international salons. In 2025 the club came…

The club has good links with other local camera clubs and photographic societies, e.g. Wakefield CC, Selby CC, Pocklington CC as well as a long-standing member of the Yorkshire Photographic Union (YPU).  We have international links with our namesake club in Australia based in Doncaster, Melbourne and in 2025/26 we established links with the Carrickmacross Camera Club in Ireland.

We pride ourselves on the images we produce and have been good enough to have represented the YPU in Photographic Alliance of Great Britain competitions on many occasions and have twice been Plate competition winners. Our meetings and competitions encourage our members to achieve excellence in their imagery.

I express my thanks to all the members who contribute to making our club successful on all levels.  I welcome you back to another year of photographic creativity.  

I would particularly like to thank all the members of the council, without whom none of the activities would happen.  Thank you all:  Alan Keen (past President), Alan Thorpe (Secretary) Carol Hall (Deputy President and Treasurer), Nick Collins (Competitions), Steve Dormer (IT), Ray Brammall, Bridget Laywood, Keith Wilson and Stephen Brown 

Alan Keen

President, Doncaster Camera Club