Divine intervention – My favourite photo of the year

If you live in or around Stroud in Gloucestershire, UK, you will be aware that the proposed closure of the 90-year-old outdoor swimming pool (or Lido, if you dared to call it that) caused a huge public outpouring early this year.

My online hyperlocal news publication, stroudtimes.com, has followed the story all year and in April I attended an early public meeting to discuss the options for keeping the pool open. It was held in the Anglican St Laurence Church, which was was filled with people eager to hear what the future of the pool might look like.

I started by photographing close-ups of the host and speakers on a 135mm lens from the front row of seats, using the silent shutter option on my Sony a9 camera. Remembering my National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) training at Stradbroke College in Sheffield in the 1980s under the tutelage of the legendary Paul Delmar I decided to work around the subject and moved to the back of the church.

It was then that everything ‘clicked’ and the similarity to Leonardo da Vinci’s 15^th century masterpiece, The Last Supper, struck me. I posted the picture on my own social media the same evening and immediately had a comment claiming that it was created with AI – it wasn’t, I stood on the step of the font to get a little more height and shot it on my 24-105mm lens and the longer focal length, using ISO 5,000 and 1/125 second at f4.5.

By the way, the outdoor pool did open this summer, albeit slightly later than usual, much to the joy of the community.

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