Check out this new film under the ABOUT menu dropdown which shows what the group has been up to during 2025.
Film: A Year in the Life of the Bury Water Meadows Group – Bury Water Meadows Group
To paraphrase a well-known saying; Memories Maketh Man… I was fortunate that my art teacher setup a darkroom at college making the next steps from camera to print possible. My early photographic years having been encouragement at my father’s side. Later joining a photography club really helped me move up a gear, as I mixed with likeminded people, many better than me!
Joining the Bury Water Meadows Group gave me an opportunity to enjoy my love of nature through the lenses of my cameras. This was all very comfortable and familiar until the possibility of making a video about the year in the life of BWMG came up. Guess who was asked to do it! I agreed but with little previous experience of video work, this was daunting, but the project was born. Most modern cameras have a video function; little used in my case, but with some practice, the video clips started to accumulate. How was I to put them together into something remotely interesting to a viewer? Fortunately, within BWMG we have a wealth of talent going back to our professional lives. It just happened that one member had been a TV Production Director, so between us, we had complementing skills.
Our initial target was to produce a video covering the first 6 months of activity, ready for the AGM in the spring of 2024. As we all know, there’s nothing like having a target date and with the expectation of my fellow Trustees to sharpen the mind! Quite some learning curve it proved to be, as the idea of a soundtrack and captions had appeared. But with modern software editing wonders, it all proved possible. For the soundtrack, the local band Shop & Drop, comprising several BWMG members, stepped in. They wrote and produced the music making this a totally ‘made in Bury St Edmunds’ project!
With a sigh of relief, the target was met and all went well on the night of the AGM. Just the second half of the project to complete. Scything and raking our wildflower meadows forms part of our annual cycle of work. This gave great opportunities for further video recording, along with recording our annual Wildlife Festival as it took place in the Abbey Gardens.
Our final target date for competition of the video was our annual social evening in November, so no time to lose! Producing a running order and editing created almost as much work as recording had done but the final version was ready to go on the evening. With my place booked for later in the evening there had been great anticipation. The video was played in full, much to the enjoyment, or was it amusement, of those at the meeting!
What comes next with these recently acquired skills? I think it’s along the lines of recording of the wide diversity of wildlife that we encounter in the town and the surrounding meadows. I just need to remember my next target date for this will be the AGM in 2026!
Christopher Cross LRPS, BWMG Trustee
