Making a first visit to the club, Colin, who has a considerable number of photographic qualifications, most importantly FRPS, proceeded to astound members with his amazing surreal type photography. His speciality is montaged images, combining features from several other images to give weird and wonderful results. Many of these images are extremely humorous, and the audience spent a large part of the evening chuckling. The images were interspersed with on-screen warnings such as “viewing these images may damage your health” and images purporting to be issued by “the ministry of peculiar pictures”. Colin also gave the club a few clues as to how he achieves his results, i.e. layers in Photoshop, other software plugins for Photoshop, including Redfield Fractalius, which in the main adds various kinds of feathery effects. He also likes to add snow effects, and how he does this is explained on his website.
This was a most enjoyable, fascinating evening, even if the feeling was that these images went a little beyond the world of true photography, and would possibly have the average camera club judge a little bemused. Colin concluded the evening with a short A/V sequence entitled “Colours of the Wind”, with some compelling abstract images.
We hope to see Colin again soon.
Report by Dorothy Wood
