Worcestershire Camera Club has been a part of our lives since 2013. It started as an interest for my husband and I just tagged along...
A few years later my husband submitted a panel of photographs to the RPS (Royal Photographic Society) and was awarded his Licentiate status. As is my wont, I took it all in, listened and learned and as days-out turned in to family photography trips I found that I was seeing images all around me. Since then I have been an active member of the club in Worcester, UK particularly enjoying the joyous experimentation of the Contemporary Photography Group.
I started the Diploma process a few years ago with a good selection of images taken during visits to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Tate St. Ives. After that, images came in fits and starts and I realised that I had been waiting for the panel to emerge from images that I happened to take whilst out and about. I had at least a dozen photographs that worked well but now I needed to actively seek those final images to bring the panel together.
Limitations to travel in 2020 meant that I had to look closer to home for shots to compliment photographs of much grander places. I resorted to my preferred method of photography - close up/macro shots. Those little details of everyday objects allowed me to find the simple shapes I was looking for.
In February 2021 the panel finally clicked in to place. I took lots of additional photos just to get a few that fit but now I’m happy with the images, both as individual shots and as a balanced panel.
For me, this project was about making a cohesive panel more than a way to improve my photography technique, although if I look back to where I started, that has happened in the process. These are the kinds of images I take - they're what I see when we're out and about. Pulling the panel together and finding images to fit in with existing images was much harder to do (and I would still change the one in the middle of the bottom row).
As this was presented and judged online, I'm looking forward to the day when I can print and mount this in an exhibition and see all of the images on a wall together in the way I originally intended them to be displayed.
Useful Links
Worcestershire Camera Club - Start at the Home page: there's a good mix of club competitions and natural history photography or if you like something a bit different try the images on the Contemporary Group pages.
