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For our last meeting of October we welcomed Lizzie Shepherd, a professional landscape photographer from North Yorkshire, who spoke to us about her journey in photography to find a new inspiration

Lizzie explained how she wanted to find compelling subjects without having the need to travel. Her talk was called Unremarkable Scenes, but unremarkable it was not!

She wanted to find something new, to experiment and be playful and not too formulaic, to find a revelation and see things differently. When showing her stunning images, she explained how she wanted to find continuity through the image, using light, the shadows, reflections, shapes, angles, patterns and varying her depth of field. She found on her journey that she is very drawn to diagonals and verticals which add a great movement through an image.

Lizzie told us that it’s not always about the light, amazing images can be created on rainy dull days. They can be more evocative with the soft light.

She looks for patterns on a big scale and repetition through the image. With blocks of colour and space so the viewer has to work their way around and image. The images have a graphic cleanliness and demonstrate how a busy image, a chaotic scene, can have simple elements of minimalism but there is a definite structure within an image.

Lizzie wants to make sense if an image and looks for scenes where colour can offer a warm and cold contrast or where there are harmonious colours complimentary to each other. She continued to explain how the absence of colour simplifies a busy scene, showing us images that demonstrated her findings.

When creating an image Lizzie want to create intriguing stories and puzzles, placing objects to create a visual puzzle. Scenes that can suggest more than one thing and keep the viewer looking, creating tricks of eye, showing us an image of a reflection of a that had been turned upside down. She described this as Pareidolia – seeing objects or scenes within an image. It certainly made you consider the image longer.

Through the talk we were shown visually stunning and creative images that had great mood and emotion, energy and depth, power and restfulness. Where composition leads to mood and curves and shapes lead the eye. Lizzie has a real ability to capture the sense of a place.

The journey Lizzie start five years ago has left her seeing things she wouldn’t usually see, and she hopes to continue to improve, to try new things and of course to enjoy it.

The night’s talk was presented by Bob Given from Northern Ireland. Bob lives in Belfast and he belongs to the Catchlight Camera Club which is the current FIAP (International Federation of Photographic Art) World Cup holder in photography. The club is also the current Irish Champion .

Bob was given his first camera at the age of 21 and he has been taking photographs ever since. He has been a sports photographer for more than 40 years and is currently employed by Northern Ireland Athletics to photograph their events. Bob used to play rugby but unfortunately had to give up due to injury. He became a rugby referee instead and served for 22 seasons.

Bob showed around 200 images during the evening  which covered a wide range of sports including athletics, cricket, American football, netball, table tennis, baseball, cage fighting (otherwise known as mixed martial arts), Australian rules football and of course rugby. He entertained the audience with humorous accounts of his personal experiences as well as giving practical advice. His love of sport, particularly rugby, was apparent throughout.

 

While Bob’s superb and prize winning images made sports photography look easy, he made it clear that it is not and that there are many pitfalls to be avoided.  The first of these is simply in choosing and gaining access to a good  position to take images,  both to achieve the best angle for shooting  the action, but also to avoid distracting backgrounds. Bob pointed out that in a number of sports the low level of lighting could be a problem and in others, for example cricket, considerable  patience is required in order to achieve just one or two quality shots.

Bob pointed out that it is useful to have a good knowledge of the sport you are photographing. Choosing the right moment to press the shutter is critical. His advice was “if you see it in the viewfinder you’ve missed the shot”. Anticipation is crucial and Bob’s many years as a rugby referee enables him to predict what will happen next. He also advised that it is essential to ensure you prepare for the event in advance and have the right equipment, particularly lenses, with you.  Even he had been caught out with the wrong lens on the odd occasion! Post processing is also important and Bob explained how he goes about this.

 

Bob’s expertise is not limited to sports photography and he brought along the twenty prints that comprised his successful Master’s panel. This demonstrated his proficiency in other fields of photography, particularly people and portraiture. His prints illustrated the exacting standards that are required to achieve a Master ‘s distinction with the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain, the highest award that can be achieved.

Bob gave us a most enjoyable an entertaining evening on a subject that was quite different to previous talks.

Julie Walker

More of Bob’s work can be seen at: https://www.facebook.com/bobgivenphotography/