The Distant Realms Not Far Away collection represents the development of my photography. Starting in late 2010, I started to explore the technique of intentional camera movement when taking photographs. I quickly discovered that the resulting images were a blending of the light and colour of the original subject and became a new representation of what was there. To me, these new representations demonstrated the “spirit” of what was there, ethereal images revealing a new beauty of what surrounds us. At this time in my life I was dealing with anxiety and depression and the discovery of beauty surrounding us at all time had a therapeutic quality.
This therapeutic quality was associated with allowing my latent creativity to have free rein in my life for the first time. I always knew that I wanted to express myself in a creative way, but had never found my “voice” and had never allowed myself to explore this aspect of my life, telling myself that it was frivolous and not of any value. This, in itself, I am sure contributed to my depression.
Friends started to comment on my photography, encouraging me to continue to develop and explore this new passion. Eventually I made the decision to show my work to a local art gallery and once again I received encouragement, but this time it was from people that I did not know and so I began to think that there was something of value in what I was doing. Buoyed by this encouragement I curated my first solo exhibition which was a great success, and following on from this I was accepted as a member of the Cheshire Artists Network which opened new doors for me.
Throughout this time I refined my technique, finding different subjects to photograph, discovering how different movements and exposures influenced the resulting image and learning how to make the most of any light conditions. When I give talks to photography clubs the audience always remark that my presentation has encouraged them to go out an experiment with their cameras, a fact that I find very satisfying and a validation of my work and approach to photography. At exhibitions one of the first questions people ask me is “are these paintings?”, and this question really resonated with me and I realised that this was exactly what I was aiming for; painting with my camera.
Comments