This week’s meeting of Bangor & North Down Camera Club was a talk by Susan Brown FRPS. Susan is the Chairperson of the Royal Photographic Society’s (RPS) Visual Arts Fellowship board and herself the holder of two RPS Fellowships.
Susan showed images from a number of different photographic projects. The first of these were photographs taken inside the now derelict Palace Theatre in Plymouth, Susan had to obtain special permission to photograph inside the building, but the fascinating images showed the high level of decay in what was once an obviously very grand building.
Susan then showed a series of images taken in the Australian Blue Mountains, monochromatic images of Eucalytptus trees and waterfalls in this Australian Rain Forest. While there Susan picked up an idea from a fellow photographer, this was to find a piece of photographic equipment and use it exclusively to produce a body of work. Susan upon returning home to England decided to try this approach. The ensuing project became her second Fellowship panel, this was a series of images of details of different fences all taken with the same 50mm photographic lens. This panel showed how a simple theme can produce an enthralling series of images.
Susan also showed a series of images of one of her personal favourite subjects which was tidal pools along the English coast. These were long exposure images where the softness of the water, provides a strong contrast with the angular and graphic shapes of the pools and their surrounding railings.
The next series of images were infrared photographs. These were taken with a specially converted camera, and produce monochrome images with bright white foliage, and very high contrast. Susan has produced many images using this approach, including very atmospheric photographs of church graveyards, and she also previewed some images from a new project using infrared to capture sports fields in a very different way.
Susan’s final series images were colour images of beach details, which had been converted into negatives producing beautiful blue tones, which again formed an impressive panel of photographs.
Our thanks to Susan for sharing her work with the club members, and for her views and insights on producing such fantastic panels of images, and her advice on how we can improve our enjoyment of the process of creating photographic images.
If you would like to see more of Susan’s work you can visit her website at https://www.susanbrownphotography.co.uk/ .