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wonderful the hills and sea made you feel, with their magical qualities of light and colour? And remember when you got the holiday snaps developed—if they came out at all!—how bad they were, how they failed to capture the beauty you’d seen?”
    “Who’s this?” Sandra whispered to Harriet while the speaker paused to sip from the glass of water on the table in front of him.
    “A man called Terry Whigham. He does a lot of pictures for the local tourist board—calendars, that kind of thing. What do you think?”
    It wasn’t anything new to Sandra, but she had more or less dragged poor Harriet into the Camera Club in the first place, and she felt that she owed it to her not to sound too smug.
    “Interesting,” she answered, covering her mouth like a schoolgirl talking in class. “He puts it very well.”
    “I think so, too,” Harriet agreed. “I mean, it all seems so obvious, but you don’t think about it till an expert points it out, do you?”
    “So the next time you’re faced with Pen-y-Ghent, Skiddaw or Helvellyn,” Terry Whigham continued, “consider a few simple strategies. One obvious trick is to get something in the foreground to give a sense of scale. It’s hard to achieve the feeling of immensity you get when you look at a mountain in a four-by-five colour print, but a human figure, an old barn or a particularly interesting tree in the foreground will add the perspective you need.
    “You can also be a bit more adventurous and let textures draw the viewer in. A rising slope of scree or a field full of buttercups will lead the eye to the craggy fells beyond. And don’t be slaves to the sun, either. Mist-shrouded peaks or cloud shadows on hillsides can produce some very interesting effects if you get your exposure right, and a few fluffy white clouds pep up a bright blue sky no end.”
    After this, the lights went down and Terry Whigham showed some of his favourite slides to illustrate the points he had made. They were good, Sandra recognized that, but they also lacked the spark, the personal signature, that she liked to get into her own photographs, even at the expense of well-proven rules.
    Harriet was a newcomer to the art, but so far she had shown a sharp eye for a photograph, even if her technique still had a long way to go. Sandra had met her at a dreadful coffee morning organized by a neighbour, Selena Harcourt, and the two had hit it off instantly. In London, Sandra had never been short of lively company, but in the North the people had seemed cold and distant until Harriet came along, with her pixyish features, her slight frame and her deep sense of compassion. Sandra wasn’t going to let her go.
    When the slide show was over and Terry Whigham left the dais to a smattering of applause, the club secretary made announcements about the next meeting and the forthcoming excursion to Swaledale, then coffee and biscuits were served. As usual, Sandra, Harriet, RobinAllott and Norman Chester, all preferring stronger refreshments, adjourned to The Mile Post across the road.
    Sandra found herself sitting between Harriet and Robin, a young college teacher just getting over his divorce. Opposite sat Norman Chester, who always seemed more interested in the scientific process than the photographs themselves. Normally, such an oddly assorted group would never have come together, but they were united in the need for a real drink—especially after a longish lecture—and in their dislike for Fred Barton, the stiff, halitoxic club secretary, a strict Methodist who would no more set foot in a pub than he would brush the dandruff off the shoulders of his dark blue suit.
    “What’s it to be, then?” Norman asked, clapping his hands and beaming at everyone.
    They ordered, and a few minutes later he returned with the drinks on a tray. After the usual round of commentary on the evening’s offering—most of it, this time, favourable to Terry Whigham, who would no doubt by now be suffering through Barton’s