The Stories Behind My Favourite Images

Steve is a member (since 1983) and past President of Amersham Photographic Society.  He also chairs the Amersham Beyond Group which concentrates on creative photography and photo-based art.

He first encountered Photoshop while working in the USA for four years in the 1990s.  He quickly realised that this would give him an unlimited toolbox to manipulate images and be creative.  He has of course been experimenting with a variety of post-processing techniques ever since.

Steve’s presentation described how he produced his twelve favourite pictures.  They are not his most successful in competitions.  They are, though, the ones he likes best.  This is his personal “Hall of Fame”.

His presentation was therefore comprised of separate named segments as Steve explained his creative thought process for each image – where his ideas first germinated, how the composite image evolved, what source images were included, what post-processing techniques were used and why, how he finally achieved his vision, and what related images were generated along the way.

1. “New York Street Scenes” covered the repositioning of a model being photographed (by someone else!) on the waterfront near Brooklyn Bridge onto the bridge itself as the “Brooklyn Angel”.
2. “Faith in Tibet” was about the “Prostrating Pilgrims” on a Buddhist pilgrimage.
3. “What to do with a Stuffed Lion” concerned the transposition of an old stuffed lion in Tring Natural History Museum to a grand staircase in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg for the “Lion Kingdom”.
4. “Staged on the Subway” was a compilation of shots of subway passengers on the platform “Waiting for the R Train”.
5. “Italian Republic Day” collected together images from a National Republic Day parade in Locorotondo, Puglia, to highlight a “Daughter of the Italian Republic”.
6. “Bauhaus Berlin” related to a reworked version of a staircase in a Berlin museum.
7. “Tate Temptations” showed how someone lying on a carpet could become “Weightless”.
8. In “Norma (No More)” a lovely Art Deco building in Miami hidden behind a tall hedge was revealed in all its glory as “Norma”.
9. “Animal Abstracts” was Steve’s exploration of ideas for transplanting animals into exotic or unusual settings, culminating in a giraffe from Whipsnade Zoo “Browsing the Canopy” in a Baltic church.
10. “Exploring the World During Lockdown” related Steve’s adventures “flying” a flight simulator app around the world and arriving at “Lockdown London”.
11. “Wyoming Winter” saw Steve herding buffaloes along a snowy “Buffalo Road”.
12. “Paris Street Art” collected a crowd around a street artist in Montmartre for “Maxim”.

Steve’s favourite images are not the result of being at the right place at the right time or getting up very early to catch the right light in the right weather conditions.  Rather, they have emerged from a germ of an idea, a heap of exposures, and long periods of experimentation and reflection.

While each creative journey segment covered the production of a single “favourite” image, Steve showed us many other images along the way as he described what he had done and how and why he had done it.  These creative journeys were captivating.  And the final images were of course “different”, “distinctive”, and, indeed, unique.

Steve is an eloquent and humorous presenter.  And his talk was generously illustrated with so many fascinating images.  All very inspirational for anyone aspiring to creative photography.