Gerald Ponting -
writer, publisher, photographer, lecturer,
based in central southern England
writer, publisher, photographer, lecturer,
based in central southern England
Colour slide presentations
1965-2008
1965-2008
Web-site created by Gerald Ponting using Serif WebPlus X2
Latest revision of this page March 2009
All material copyright - see copyright notice
In 1965 I had a month-long camping holiday in Iceland, quite an unusual thing to do in those days. The local paper did a feature on our trip and as a result I was asked to give a talk to a local Women’s Institute. At that time I was mainly using black-and-white print film, but I had one hundred or so slides to use in my talk.
By word of mouth and then by a flier circulation, I gradually established a reputation as a speaker in the Ipswich area. ‘Camping in Iceland’ was seen by 20 or more societies and talks on succeeding holidays in Turkey and Crete became equally popular.
In the early 1970s, active in early environmental movements and concerned about the depletion of resources, I compiled and specially photographed a talk entitiled ‘Leave Some for Your Grandchildren’. This was seen by around 45 societies - before I left Suffolk and settled in the Outer Hebrides.
In due course, I put together a twin-screen colour slide presentation on the Callanish Stones, ‘The Stonehenge of the Hebrides’. In the summer of 1984, I presented this at Harvard University and at the Smithsonian in Washington.
Back in Hampshire later in the 1980s, and to a greater extent after I had retired from teaching in 1992, I expanded my ‘lecturing’ activities, sometimes giving as many as 80 in a year. Over the past 25 years, I have visited around 550 different societies in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, West Sussex and occasionally further afield. Some societies invite me back year after year.
In 2006 I started digital photography, with the result that from 2008 onwards, my slide presentations have been ‘pensioned off’ and most of my talks are now illustrated with projected digital images.
The photographs on this page are a few of those which I have used in the past to publicise my slide presentations.
Clockwise from top : Breamore, Hampshire; Vallay Strand, North Uist; Carmague pony, France; giraffe, Zimbabwe; Canadian Rockies; Aphrodite’s Rocks, Cyprus; Greek taverna cat.