AV Peter

About AV Peter

Peter Coles

was born in Carlisle on the 4th of January 1935 and first moved to the Calder Valley in 1948, when his father Thomas William Coles became vicar of St. Mary’s Luddendenfoot. He attended Sowerby Bridge Grammar School where he met his wife Enid. He read Chemistry, Theology and Education at Leeds University. He taught Chemistry in two Bradford Grammar Schools and was a Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University teaching teachers of Chemistry. From there he went into Local Government in the South-East of England.
In 1986, he gave up his post as Chief Education Adviser for Berkshire and moved back to his roots in the Calder Valley to concentrate on his photography and writing. Over forty of his books and a few thousands of his pictures are now published and he has himself, through Sephton Enterprises, published a number of works by other authors. He has had several one-man exhibitions of his photographic montages but he is probably better known for his Audio-Visual works; he was National AV Champion in 1991 with “Jill is Still” and again in 2003 with “Sarah” which he co-produced with Sheilah Peel who lives in Westport in the Irish Republic. He has now achieved well over a hundred-and-fifty major International awards including having twice won the European Cup for Diaporama, once with his friend Colin Balls with “Motorway” and once on his own with “Kingdom Come”. He achieved his Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society with Pictorial Prints in 1986 and also a Fellowship in AV in the same year. Until 2007 he edited, produced and published a quarterly magazine AV WORLD, the only generally available publication in the English language devoted exclusively to Audiovisual work. This was established by Peter and his two AV friends Colin Balls and Peter Coles when the RPS decided that AV News (which Peter then edited) could not be available to non members. The Royal Photographic Society has recently recinded their ban on non-members purchasing AV News and so there is now no need to publish two similar magazines.

Peter and Enid have three children:
Mark is a radio reporter and presenter with the BBC World Service,
Richard, amongst other things, teaches English in Madrid
and Belinda helps to manage a World-wide employment agency.
Currently they have six grandchildren, Ally, Emma and Joe in Reading; Pablo and Hanna in Madrid;  andHari James Sephton Coles was born to Mark and Lela on 27th 2007 in London.

Peter represents Luddendenfoot Ward on Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council.

For those discontent with the fly-leaf, who would really like to know the whole story of his Images and what has become of them, read on

and on

and on:

Peter Coles: his passion for photography and AV

Peter has been taking photographs for over 60 years. He started with a posh-looking Italian-job camera which was really just a simple box camera but it did look good! Then his grandma contributed towards a proper camera on the understanding that he would never take her photograph; but he did anyway and also surprised a lot of folk, including himself in 1956-7 when some of his images adorned the walls of Leeds University because he had won several Awards. Peter was supposed to spend most of his time reading Chemistry but he did play a lot of football as well as taking pictures. In 1957/8 Peter’s Education thesis for his Dip Ed involved a sort-of-one-projector-AV on “The Jewish Religion in Leeds”, which gained him a distinction, probably because even university lecturers would prefer to look at pictures that read too many words, even though they had to set up a projector and tape recorder to do so! So the proper camera, this time an Irish-job called a Corfield Periflex, was standing him in good stead. Fancy the Irish being famous for cameras! It was, indeed, the first camera to use multi-coated Lanthanum glass and was probably the forerunner of the mass-market single-lens reflex camera, as it had a periscope which dipped in to the field-of-view to ensure accurate focussing. One of Peter’s Grandma-pictures, shown below (when he finds out how to do it) , appeared five decades later in an AV called “What I Call Love”. This is also the title of Peter’s first published book of Poems.

Peter married Enid in 1958 and taught Chemistry in two Grammar Schools in Bradford. He set up a Photographic Group in his second job as Head of Chemistry at Thornton Grammar School. One of his “pupils”, John Robinson, is now a member of Leeds AV Group! Another, John Baruch, a Professor in Bradford University is, amongst other things, in charge of a degree course in Digital Imaging.

Peter then went on to teach teachers at Loughborough. He was also invited to take part in a lecture tour of Northern Universities and so, once again his trusty Periflex came in useful as his topic for the lectures was “Teaching Chemistry with Models”! Sadly, these were not the cat-walk sort of models but molecular models! Loughborough, seemed like an easy job to him: four lectures a week and walking round a couple of practical sessions talking to students about what they were doing, but then came a revolution when, suddenly, Loughborough College had to find a way of teaching a few hundred students “Materials Science” with only one Physical Science lab. So Peter volunteered to teach them via closed-circuit television. This entailed designing the lectures, demonstrations and audio-visual aids and controlling three television cameras at the same time as giving the lectures. This proved to be fascinating but exhausting work, particularly as to make ends meet for his growing family (Enid had produced three in under three years!), Peter spent most weekends taking photographs of horses jumping over fences at numerous venues throughout the land for a local entrepreneur to sell to them - to the horse-riders not the horses! Peter tried cine for a short while to record his children growing up, but he soon found that the quality of image was disappointing and so it was back to 35mm. When Peter became Science Adviser and later Senior Adviser for Buckinghamshire, he was co-author with Doug Kincaid of over twenty books, on science for young children; these needed copious photographic illustrations. In-service sessions were required and in 1969 Peter saw one guy, the Audio-visual Aids Adviser, use his hands in front of two Kodak Carousels to fade from one image to the next, so soon there were two-projector AVs to illustrate what the books were trying to say.

After a number of years Peter had moved on to become Chief Education Adviser for the Royal County of Berkshire where using AV became more and more pertinent and effective. First there was a compact twin-projector: a Rollie job which seemed to be very good, but then managed to break down on important occasions so it was back to Kodak Carousels, this time three of them with an Imatronic Triangle.

Peter formed a group of over-a-hundred Berkshire teachers interested in using photographs in their teaching; Sir George Pollock was very helpful with the Group and mentioned the Royal Photographic Society. Peter tried to encourage the RPS to accept this experiment as a way of expanding the RPS membership. (There were more teachers interested in photography than there were members of the RPS!) Eventually, after two years, a paper Peter had written was put to Council who dismissed the idea of developing Associate Schools within about half an hour!

Having found the RPS and achieved his Licenciateship in 1984 with a set of prints, Peter ventured up North to an RPS AV Day. He remembers it well and recalls an AV by Keith Brown about a young woman crying when she learned about the death of John Lennon. He showed an epic Sequence himself called “God’s Story Time” which was then just over 20 minutes long! The pundits of the day told him it was far too long in no uncertain terms, taking almost as long to tell him as the duration of Sequence itself. They were right, of course, because the second half was just an over-long series of fading flowers intended to give folk time to reflect on the profound philosophy which preceded this!!! However, there must have been something right about it too, as the shortened version helped Peter achieve his ARPS in 1985 and subsequently gained a couple of International Awards. Peter doesn’t like hanging around, so in the same year he had achieved a couple of RPS Fellowships, one in AV with a submission entitled “Six Poems” and the other with Pictorial Prints - a set of 18 montages.

A couple of notable Fellows were observing the AV Distinctions Panel on this occasion in Sheffield, Richard Brown and Colin Balls; it has since been discovered that neither of them would have been in favour of recommending Peter for his RPS Fellowship in AV on this occasion. (Those arguing in favour, apparently, were Michael Tickner and Doreen Pollock) Peter was aware of this and so he was very surprised when Colin Balls asked him if he would like to write a script for a Sequence he had in mind. Somewhat apprehensively Peter went to Colin’s house and saw some images of vehicles travelling along motorways. He was actually very impressed and so he said to Colin, “Yes, I suppose I could write something to accompany these images, but I thought you didn’t like my Sequences and, by the way, what I might write would not be describing these images, it would be more about what was in the mind of one driver”. “Why do you think I asked you?” said Colin. Peter had, by now, given up proper work and moved back to his roots in the North to concentrate on his writing and photography, so a couple of days later, a tape of words and music called “Motorway” popped through Colin’s Chorley letterbox and, shortly after this, Colin rang Peter to say he liked the script; maybe he would change the order of a couple of stanzas if that seemed OK, but he didn’t want to use the music although he realised the significance of the song at the beginning. Peter never did intend any significance whatsoever in the accompanying music; it was just there as an introduction before the Genesis instrumental which he used as background! So “Motorway” was born, produced and sent off as an entry for the RPS International. It failed to get through Pre-selection, although Sir George Pollock was furious about that and forecast that it would do well somewhere, sometime. It did. Within 12 months it had won Le Coupe de l’Europe in Epinal and several other International Awards. It is indeed, currently, the most Awarded International AV Sequence in the world! Colin has always been generous in his comments about the part Peter played in its success. When about a decade ago, Colin retired from Chairman of the RPS Distinctions Panel, he had no hesitation in recommending Peter as his successor.

In 2005 Peter retired from this distinguished position after eight years service as Chair and many previous years as an active member of the Panel. He tells us that the most difficult part of his job was being with applicants whose submissions were not recommended to Council for the Distinction for which they had applied. Others tell us how appreciative they were for the helpful comments made by Peter and the Panel, whether or not they were successful.

Peter’s own ventures into International Competitions have been remarkably successful. A brief glance in the FIAP book of Authors’ Sequences will show you that 57 of his analogue Sequences have achieved a total 87 International Awards, including seven Grand Prix, and that, since the first all-digital International Competition (The IAC Geoffrey Round Competition, which he actually established and helped organise, in Aldbourne, in 2003), he has already achieved over 50 International Awards including 4 Grand Prix. This FIAP book also indicates that Peter has more Awards (and more Internationally recorded Sequences) than any other author in the world. He has won our own National AV Championships twice, firstly with “Jill Is Still” in 1990 and more recently in 2003 with “Sarah” (made with Sheilah Peel). This was the first time a digital Sequence was given our top National Award. He was honoured with a Fellowship of the Irish Photographic Federation in 1989. In 1992 he was awarded his AFIAP and his EFIAP in 1995. In April 2007 he received the honour of FACI from the IAC and on 20th October 2007 he was Awarded FACI(M) - (Master of AV). He regards the Dobson Henry Medal given him (by the RPS AV Group) in 1998 for Services to AV as his proudest AV possession. Peter is an active member of two AV Groups: Leeds AV Group and Wilmslow Guild AV group. His latest works are available for download on this site.

There can be few AV workers who have not been in some way affected by Peter’s words images and Sequences but he himself prefers to recognise the contributions that others have made towards his own growth over three decades of AV companionship. He lists some of them in no particular order, other than just as they pop into his head.Some of these will be no surprise; others - well some may wonder why they are there, but these are just as important to Peter.

Michael Ticker, mentor, critic and somewhat-crazy AV friend and former Editor of AV News (particularly for his enthusiastic critical support during Peter’s formative AV years);

Sir George Pollock (particularly for his generous support and judgement during Peter’s time in Berkshire); Lady Doreen Pollock (particularly for her faith and encouragement and for her amusing banter with Sir George);

Colin Balls (particularly for his blunt humorous but kind criticism and his remarkable production skills and, of course for his provision, at great cost, of the Royale tools to do the job); Rhona Balls (particularly for her pretty firm control of Colin and CBAV and some of the rest of the AV fraternity);

Ron Davies (particularly for his considerable and sometimes-even-over-considered conversations during those ever-so-many Welsh tales and other foreign AV adventures, for his photographic skills and his remarkable attention to AV detail);

Jesus Christ (particularly for his considerable help with most of Peter’s scripts);

Maureen Albright (particularly for her construction and maintenance of numerous AV web sites, for her love of control and for her ever-so-many, funny, sometimes-even-helpful e-mails);

Marion Waine (particularly for her lovely smiling through a glass of wine, in spite of everything);

Iain Lang (particularly for his perceptive and sometimes risky criticisms within “Lang’s Lines” and pertinent, sometimes impertinent conversations in those early AV days);

Walter Jones (particularly for some dark spaces and the light emerging from them);

Keith Leedham (particularly for his AV teaching skills);

Malcolm Imhoff (particularly for his mountain photographs and for Maggie waiting for him and a few other folk to come back down to earth);

Brian Jeffs (particularly for his well-considered recent criticism and organisational progress within our RPS AV Group);

Brian Bower (particularly for his superb Chairmanship of Peter’s first Distinctions Panel meetings);

Keith Scott (particularly for his development of AV skills, for his use of humour within his AVs and for his widening of ambitions within the Leeds AV group);

Eddie Spence (particularly for his rapid progress and encouragement of others within the RPS AV groups);

Ralph Smith (particularly for his development of an audience for the Leeds AV Group’s work and for teaching Peter the elements of PTE);

Geoff Holmes (particularly for his “Last Train”, “Millstone Grit” and the odd whisky at his Adel Pasture home);

Keith Fisher (particularly for being so good so soon);

Bernard Longley (particularly for recognising so soon that Keith Fisher was so good and for allowing his partner’s penguins to flower so well);

Bill Greenhalgh (particularly for his penguins and shopping trolleys);

Howard Gregory (particularly for his quiet use of sound and showing this to Suzanne and others); Suzanne Walker (particularly for her “Childhood Memories” and her quiet, unobtrusive control of Howard Gregory and others);

Keith Brown (particularly for his most helpful comments on other folk’s work);

Richard Brown (particularly for his judgement and especially his ability to spot what others often miss);

Sylvia Williams (particularly for her laugh);

Adrian Battersby (particularly for “The Mind of Man”);

Srdjan Plavsa (particularly for his visual progression);

Gérard Desroches (particularly for his International translations and tact and for his wife Sue’s friendship and encouragement);

Willem van den Berg (particularly for his Irish music and his ability to make other folk’s production rate seem so rapid);

Henk Tulp (particularly for being so perceptive about British AV workers and for putting up with Willem van den Berg, Ron Davies and Peter Coles);

Ian Bateman (particularly for his rapid understanding of progress in AV techniques);

Martin Fry (particularly for his superb long dissolves so long ago);

The Calverts (particularly for their “Tomato Triptic”);

Ken Best (particularly for “The Game”);

Allan Green (particularly for his graphic visual skills and visual sense of humour);

Gertrud Frohnweiler (particularly for her production of AV Tip and for her many superb Sequences);

Janos Eifert (particularly for speechless visual progression);

Janos Dozvald (particularly for his thoughtful conversations and for “Orient Express”);

Jacques Denis (particularly for his dogged support for FIAP despite all its faults); Andree Denis(particularly for her amazing loyal support of Jacques and all his works);

Joan Wakelin (particularly for her people photography and for her fun);

Barbara and Doug Mullins (particularly for their generous support of Australian AV and for all those who have ventured in to their AV world down under);

Ricardo Zarate (particularly for his development of Digital AV circuits);

Jacques van de Weerdt (particularly for the superb use of his own voice in his and other folk’s AVs);

Johan Werbrouck (particularly for his superb recent Sequences);

Louis Dickers (particularly for his superb not-so-recent Sequences);

Jean & Renée Prissette (particularly for their many wonderful visual interpretations of music);

Edna Walker & Brenda Mitchell (for their fun in being AV’s Glamorous Grannies).

Peter says he could go on and on listing worker after worker and that, if he has seen just one of your AVs, then you have most certainly influenced him; for that is what we do for each other.

If he has not seen at least one of your AVs then he says that it is time he did.

Peter had an accident  in mid July 2007, he became unconcious whilst driving along the A646 and hit the vehicle in front of him.

The Registrar at the hospital thought the problem may be in the head rather than the heart so Peter is now to have his head examined. Lots of folk have suggested this at an earlier stage of his life!

The head is now examined - no results yet to indicate if they found anything at all in there! On exit from the magnet Peter asked the operators who chose the music played to folk whilst in there: “Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much ….” next “Everybody hurts some time ….” then  - The Byrds with Ecclesiastes chaper 3 - the bit often read at funerals! “…A time to live and a time to die… ” !!!!

So Peter does not now drive; any invitations to show his work would need to include the supply of projection equipment for such an occasion.

Peter will keep readers informed of whether there is owt up with ‘is ‘ed or whether indeed they found owt much in there at all !!!! All the tests so far just show how difficult it is for experts to find what is up with a simple mind or a fond heart or maybe it is just a quaint combination of these two factors which causes an all to regular problem. As Christmas is coming and Peter does not particularly like writing a “round robin” to tell folk all about the lates, trips, achievements and ambitions etc, he will put a bit here.

Peter is being “seen” by  five specialists in Halifax Royal; the heart man has now decided that it is not that which causes him to pass out; the head man decided that, like many others his age, he has minor stroke-like areas on the edge of his brain; the brain man has decided that he thinks Peter has a condition related to epilepsy and so the latest “treatment” is another batch of pills to take. Peter has to build up to the correct dose and keep checking how his “rat poison” is being affected by this new drug! He just hopes that they are all correct and that soon he may be able to drive again. If only they would speak with each other, he might get a story he could believe in !!!

The really good news is that after a first very frustrating week, when things seemed no better at all, Peter, at the turn of the year, has not has any hint of a blackout for ten days or so !!!!  Ten days later all is still OK - Let’s hope this continues. But sadly it didn’t! Monday 18th February, I was on a Calderdale MBC site visit when I blacked out and spent the rest of the day in hospital, so it’s back to square one, almost.

The young, ever-so-pretty, lady doctor said that it was probably just a blip:- for “probably” read “don’t know” and for “blip” read “don’t know what that is either” !  So the good news did not last all that long and after a few more set-backs the dose is being increased. Hopefully the experts will get it sorted soon.

Enid and Peter now have six grandchildren.
The latest arrival is Hari James Sephton Coles, born to Mark and Leala earlier this year. Enid seems a bit better; maybe she is just getting used to her osteiaporosis but she seems to be in less pain and walks better than she did a year or so ago. A lot of her time is spent opening parcels for Richard’s business in Madrid. In one way or another she still seems to spend as much time as she ever did looking after our “children” and, of course, now our six grandchildren. She still has the other big kid at home - Peter - and he seems to take a lot of looking after !  If you want to hear Mark, try BBC World Service at about 2.30 am on Friday mornings or Sunday mornings - and just occasionally now, on Radio 4’s Today prgramme. “They” are trying to encourage him to present a daytime news programme every day but he is trying to resist this in order to look after Hari James Sephton !  He has just made his first contribution to TV but if, like us, you don’t yet have digits you won’t be able to see him! Well you may not see or even hear him for a while as the three of them have just flown off to Australia for three weeks. They are back now. Richard struggles on in Madrid looking after Anna and Hanna and trying to make ends meet, selling what he calls his “antiques” (and Peter calls “British rubbish”) to unsuspecting Spaniards. Belinda and Robert are “separated”. Belinda is left most of the time on her own, trying to look after their three children, whilst holding down a busy job, helping manage a recruitment business, which is in the process 0f being taken over by a Dutch firm. Peter’s sister, Margaret, seems to be coping with her cancer remarkably well; it must be almost two decades since she was first diagnosed with her problem. Dorothy and Ernest both have mobility problems but are coping well with these.Geoffrey is delighted that Pamela is doing so well with her priesthood and he himself seems to be getting stronger now. We all hope this progress continues. WE went recently to Geoffrey’s 70th Birthday celebrations.

Joyce flits between her grandchildren in the Midlands and Bahli.

Bobby still lectures, now and then, at York University. We ourselves would like to hear more from him.

I have recently found out how good the young can be at learning things which took us ages. Alicia, my oldest grandchild, has just completed a Sequence called “PTE & ME”, ready for the IRIS -25 Competition. The Sequence was completed in one afternoon started from scratch just after lunch, having gathered a few images up on the tops at lunchtime. The Soundtrack is the worst bit of it so Alicia is coming to re-make it here within the next week or two.

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