Many members will remember Pat Whalley and will recall his many excellent wildlife photographs which charmed and delighted over many years.
Sadly, Patrick died in April, (2024). He was 85. Some of us attended his funeral at Acton church.
Patrick led a rich and active life. His great photography was perhaps even surpassed by his talents as an artist, both inspired by his love of wildlife, which also manifested itself in him co-founding the South East Cheshire Ornithological Society and running an unofficial wildlife hospital among many other things. He would often be building a hide or some contraption to enable him to photograph or paint some aspect of wildlife behaviour in true pioneering style.
Those hands which deftly captured detail so realistically with pen and brush could also easily make fine cake decorations and mend things in that inventive make-do fashion which is so rare these days.
His calm, sure hand perhaps also played a part in saving his crew when the brakes on his Land Rover failed on a steep descent in the Highlands. By using handbrake and gear changes he slowed the vehicle (and caravan) down sufficiently to get by passing traffic and into a lorry park at the bottom, where the outfit came to a halt, to the great relief of all on board. He then calmly got out and repaired the brakes!
We all loved those wildlife images, not just technically excellent but often depicting an unusual species (I will always remember ‘Fan-tailed Cisticola’) or aspect of behaviour or even plants too (much underrepresented in club photography).
Patrick worked in the era of film photography and was used to careful preparation and the dependency on planning and timing to get things right straight off, with virtually no post editing available. It is remarkable how well his images stand up against today’s winners, a mark of the excellence he achieved, a standard which will be long remembered at Crewe Photographic Society.
John Royle