My Photographic Journey

On the evening of April 15th, Keyworth Camera Club was given a presentation called My Photographic Journey by Steve Proctor DPAGB BPE5* via Zoom.

Steve gave us a brief insight into his photographic history which began in 1981. He thought he was a good photographer before joining a camera club in 2011 and the images he saw there made him revise his opinion of himself and he knew he had to up his game. He soon realised one of the best ways to learn was through his own mistakes.

The talk was split into two halves, the first covering Steve’s nature work and the second part looked at his portrait photography. Both began with illustrations of his early work and moved forward showing how he’d learnt from past experiences. Steve also said that as his Photoshop ability got better, he would revisit some of his older images and redo them with his new skills – the examples showing stunning transformations.

Throughout the nature section Steve suggested many places we could go to learn our craft. He showed a wide variety of wildlife throughout this part of the evening whilst explaining how we could take similar images with dedication and by carrying a variety of baits with us when going out to photograph fauna. 

Steve’s people images covered working in studio’s and on location. He touched on the current trend of remote shooting which had allowed him to continue photographing models throughout Covid restrictions. He suggested asking for a model’s input into your ideas as this usually brought about better results. Preplanning is a big part of Steve’s people photography.

The evening was crammed with tips about how to get the best from your subject and about management of light and shadows – the latter creates shape. Steve’s patter was filled with humorous tales that gave a great light-hearted tone to the evening. 

Thank-you for giving us a thoroughly entertaining evening Steve, our membership and guests enjoyed every moment of it. You’ve certainly given us plenty to think about when next tackling the two subjects of your well put together talk.

We’ll finish this report with a quote from Ansel Adams that Steve uses to motivate his thinking when planning and taking his excellent photographs: ‘There are two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.’