Wachindy

Hold a star in your hand? 

Photography is music to the eye, it is visual poetry!

Over the last couple of years I have been a member of the Southern Highlands Photograpic Society (SHPS for short). In the short time that I have participated in this group I have learned a great deal - especially from listening to our guest judges who come to judge our images and being able see what interests other photographers and how they go about taking their images.

I have taken part in a couple of workshops - including a weekend down in Jervis Bay and a day doing street photography in Sydney on a very wet day - definitely not conducive to camera work! 

Last year after diligently presenting my 3 images at our judging evenings I had managed to accumulate quite a few credits and distinctions. But I was to be pleasantly suprised at our Christmas dinner when I was awarded second place for a coloured photograph - and then immensely  suprised at being awarded the Best Photographer for 2014!!! wow!  I have proudly displayed my trophy on the kitchen bench all year!

 Images can be deceptive, or they can tell the truth. Images are snap frozen moments that tell a story just like words. Words are finite, even as the list grows to encompass our new technologies and customs it shrinks as outdated terms disappear. Only those who study linguistics or literature would beg to differ I'm sure! Images on the other hand are always with us, technology only changes the methods by which those images are taken and kept.

Images are windows to the soul. Each person sees the same thing differently, so a photograph taken from the same vantage point by different people will always vary - and on the flip-side - people looking at one photograph will see something different. Each person has their own spirit; shapes and colours, landscapes and people - images enter through the eyes the same way - but that's where it stops, or maybe where it all starts....

Where is photography going?  

 It's hard to know anymore whether a photograph depicts a true image, it's veracity is always questioned now... could that sunset really have been that colourful? Was the water really that blue? With such a variety of post-editing software availabe now you can't be sure 100% that a photograph really is what it shows itself to be.

Photography falls loosley into  two categories: work or pleasure. Those that use photography to earn a living -whether it be for a geographic magazine or for sport or hobby, reportage, studio work or as a foreign correspondant generally use the medium to show the truth, to make us look at something again and again, to make us question what we see and why things are the way they are. Those that use photography as an art form or as a hobby, those who are amateurs and those who just love the medium can manipulate to their heart's content and the end result is always to be questioned.

If it is for pleasure then we take photographs of the things we love - for whatever reason - for fun and enjoyment, to share the things we see with those who are unable to do so, or to poke fun at life, or perhaps to turn it into art.

Whatever the reason it's available to almost everyone these days - just owning a phone allows people to take photos where ever and whenever they choose - and then they can be plastered all over the net for the whole world to see - for better or for worse! Flickr is great for sharing images, youTube is a great place for videos, Facebook is not something I'm a great fan of - but it is a place to share photos with friends and family - but it really needs to be kept under control and it really has a lot to answer for.

I've decided to take my photography to a new level, I want to be able to do something with it. I have started a short workshop in photography for professional use. I'm not sure where this will take me but I need to critically examine my work and in which direction I would like to go. It was great to receive useful criticism of my work by a professional photographer, and certainly it opened my eyes to what other perceive as my photographic style......I am now going back and looking at my trillions of photographs and see if this style is so evident, and if so, how have I not seen it before?