Chairman: Martin Fry FRPS APAGB (UK)

 Martin is one of the leading exponents of audio-visual in the country. He gained his Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society using 4 projectors and since the digital age has developed this art form. He has gained numerous international awards as well as runner-up at both the National and International on two occasions each. 

Martin is one of the leading exponents of audio-visual in the country. He gained his Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society using 4 projectors and since the digital age has developed this art form. He has gained numerous international awards as well as runner-up at both the National and International on two occasions each. 

Over 25 years Martin has lectured in over 250 photographic clubs across Britain and Ireland. He is currently Chairman of Cheltenham Camera Club which has 140 members. He is also a well known National judge in all areas of photography and has been a member on the RPS distinction panel. 

Martin’s love of AV was inspired through watching work by Sir George & Lady Doreen Pollock and the Midland trio of Keith Brown, Clive Atkins and Richard Brown. A great deal of Martin’s photography portrays the beauty of his native Gloucestershire and the spectacular Cornish landscape which have both used in his audio-visual imagery and the magical third-image.

John Willett (UK)

John Willett has been in the sound business for many years.  He was with REW Pro-Audio in the late 70's/early 80's and also freelanced at LBC Radio in London (Sunday Supplement programme) winning the local radio prize in the UNDA festival of religious broadcasting in 1979.  

He joined Hayden Laboratories in 1985 and moved with the Sennheiser product line to Sennheiser UK in 1990, staying with them until early 2010.  He is also well known as a classical music recording engineer and owner of Circle Sound Services. He is the Chairman of the British Sound Recording Association in addition to his work on the executive committee of the Institute of Professional Sound.

In 2007 he was also elected President of the International Federation of Soundhunters (FICS - Fédération Internationale des Chasseurs de Sons) who organise the International Amateur Recording Contest. He is also a member of the Audio Engineering Society.

Jacques van de Weerdt (Belgium)

Jacques started his AV career in the 1970's, where he was encouraged to compete in the Liege and Mechelen festivals. Coming from a theatrical background, Jacques prefers to make sequences that build atmosphere with tense and dramatic storylines. Initially this style of AV met with little favour in Belgium, but was more successful in the French festivals. 

The topics chosen by Jacques for his sequences have been controversial, ranging from racism, the miners’ strike of the 1980’s, genocide and a fatal mugging at Brussels railway station. In recent years he has collaborated with fellow juror Jean-Paul Petit, with the latest sequence being  “Le Grande Prairie” about the American painter Edward Hopper, using the current techniques of zooming and motion effects.

Looking to the future, Jacques concludes that maybe the traditional art of ‘diaporama’ as we know it will die as the new techniques take over. But for now we still enjoy it, and by attending festivals such as this one we should all take delight in meeting our fellow AV workers, and by showing our works to appreciative audiences.

Jean-Paul Petit (France)

Jean-Paul lives in Montrouge in the suburbs of Paris, where he is the organiser of "Objectif Image" a well known club in the AV world. The club has about 30 members, and has been meeting twice a month since the 1980's. As well as producing sequences, the members enjoy discussing the technical aspects of AV, and also the emotional impact a sequence can have on the audience.

Jean-Paul has been making sequences for many years, with the earliest success coming from "Pinball" in 1976. Since then his sequences have won awards at numerous festivals, including previous RPS International Festivals with "Beatles", and a two-slide sequence called "British Embassy". It was at this festival that he met Colin Balls, which led to a collaborative sequence "Mission No 9" that won the Grand Prix at the RPS International Festival in 2004.

He has also made several joint-sequences with fellow juror Jacques van de Weerdt, and they have been wrking together since 1982. As well as making sequences, Jean-Paul is also the joint-organiser of th "Trophee de Paris" AV Festival, and has written two books on AV, "Le diaporama, un loisir, un art, une passion" with Jacques Muller in 1991, and "Réaliser un diaporama numérique" in 2003.

He is looking forward to seeing the entries, and is proud and privilaged to be a member of the jury.