The third meeting of the season featured a presentation by Cheshire photographer Lynda Haney MPAGB FBPE EFIAP (www.purpledaisy.uk) from Southport Photographic Society. Lynda’s talk, entitled Creative Images was about her photographic journey from being a young girl to the present day and learning from her grandad about how an image of herself could be captured inside this box (a camera). He told her it was magic. Lynda went on to explain how she wanted to paint images but eventually chose digital photography.
Through her employer, she was able to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop and also joined the local camera club. Lynda admitted she was initially too scared to submit any images for competition however, when the club had a competition entitled movement, she submitted her first photo called Going Home and won it.
Lynda began teaching how to use Photoshop to teachers who were teaching their children. As this was the mid 90s, there was no internet, Google, YouTube or Wiki to give Lynda the assistance on using Photoshop. Lynda asked her boss for help but he suggested she, “press buttons” to see what happened so off she went to learn.
Later on in her photographic journey, Lynda’s club entered a competition and the winning image was Lynda’s Pheasant In The Snow. The judge was really surprised as it was her old employer but hadn’t realised how far she had progressed.
Lynda’s favourite genre is wildlife and whilst she is happy tackling any another genre, she did say people photos really are the most challenging. Her initial creativity came from her love of painting and trying to create photographs in the style of famous artists. From this she discovered how to create a textured layer that could be added on top of a ‘normal’ photo, before adding several different textures (all on different layers) to create an infinite number of textures. Her creativity was going at full speed. Lynda showed many photos, explained the back story well (her time spent teaching physics to A Level meant she was good at public speaking), interspersing with her own humour to keep the audience thoroughly entertained.
Lynda brought a selection of printed work that was available for all members to view. She talked about paper choice. After a break for tea & biscuits, Lynda dissected a couple of photographs, showing how each one started from the original shot to the finished image, each one having hundreds of layers with huge file-sizes. The mammals were all taken at her local zoo.
Whilst the talk was about Lynda’s creative photography, she did mention that for wildlife photography, her lens of choice was the Sony 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens.
Some of our members will add textured layers to their images but Lynda gave the audience much needed enthusiasm especially seeing so many amazing photos. This really was magic!
Jeremy Malley-Smith