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| Influences
My email; jemraid[aT]btinternet(d0t)com Brooke Shaden I found Brooke in May 2025, astonished by her wonderful, innovative and intensely personal work I explored her videos; these include Photoshop technique and how to find inspiration, how to do something to start anyone wanting to become a fine artist. For me the most telling of her statements was Risk Taking, I began with posh prints in large sizes as one does, failed. I joined Folksy and Etsy too much of the main stream on there, thought about photobooks I used to make stab bound ones, too heavy and too expensive to post. Lightweight A5 Zines followed until the same too expensive to post came up over the horizon. My latest endeavour is A6 photo Zines light weight and can be posted to the UK the EU and Japan at low postal rates. Sadly Mr Trump prohibits the import of anything into the USA without a 'charge' I refuse to jump through the hoops. Anne W Brigman I came across her self image 'The Soul of The Blasted Pine' about 60 years ago, a self image she posed for in 1908 while on one of her and her friends expeditions in the Sierra Nevada. She was trained as an artist in Hawaii, married a sea captain, moved to California, found photography and as they say. 'the rest is history'. Catherine McIntyre In 2003 I wrote to Catherine asking for some basic help with Photoshop which she very kindly did and that set me off. Her beautiful and complex montages were done in Photoshop 6.0 introduced in 2000. She authored the book Visual Alchemy for sale on Amazon please read my review it's the first one, reading it again I should have taken my own advice years ago! Bill Viola I happened to be at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where there was an exhibition of Bill's video work. He used high speed cameras and the videos were slowed down to normal viewing speed. As soon as I saw this work I thought I would love to do that. Eventually I found Power Director and used figurative montaged still images to slowly assemble themselves over time. I submitted them to art calls worldwide. Cyanotypes or Blue Prints These are made using artists papers hand coated with an iron based photosensitive coating. It is a contact printing process the negative being the same size as the print. They develop in shades of blue and can be toned using Tea which changes them to shades of brown. I submitted ten to the Royal Photographic Society and was awarded their LRPS certificate. The darkroom I used two film cameras 35mm and a 4"x5" which I made myself with help from the traders at the photo fair in Wolverhampton. I used the 35mm for street and fashion photographs and the 4x5 for woodland stuff, going out with just two sheets of film. City & Guilds These rigorous qualifications are a daunting prospect for any student, it takes about 6 months to obtain one, the students are encouraged to do their own research. I helped our local photography tutor by showing students how to print from negatives. Eventually I decided to take on two modules and was awarded distinctions in both. I still have and treasure my work books, many of the students were able to join college photography courses with just their C&G workbooks. Amateur Photographer A UK photography magazine mostly concerned with gear. I think it was in the early nineties the phone rang and one of the editorial staff asked me to do reviews of photo exhibitions in the West Midlands. He wouldn't tell me where or who he got my phone number from, so I said OK I'll do one and we'll see how it goes, thinking well there aren't many shows of photos in this cultural desert. The phone rang again a few weeks later and it was the AP guy would I go and look at an exhibition. I asked who the photographer was, he said Eve Arnold, I said (expletive) can't do that as a first review knowing who she was, Marilyn Monroe's close friend and a Magnum member, in those days you could not join it and had to be elected by the other members and only then would you be informed. I did do it and he kindly showed me how to do it properly. A couple of years went by and the last phone call from him was to explain that he'd got a new job and was going to live in Japan where as he put it,"All the action is". All these influences and my collection of photobooks are in my mind as I create my montages. Websites. To author my sites I use Kompozer it's free, works like a word processor so what you see is what you get. Loads of other free stuff is available like CSS, Java Script and HTML code that can be pasted in the Source window for stuff like slide shows. For simple sites like this where visitors want pics and information it's ideal. I use Asura Hosting and for about £15 per year fixed fee I get a huge amount of file space and unlimited bandwidth. I have never had a problem with this company and should I send in a support ticket I get a reply within a few hours. Very well done indeed! If you got this far thanks for your patience I didn't realise how much there was until I stopped typing! |