THURSDAY 25th November 2021
Mainly Creative, Mostly for Fun
John Perriam ARPS DPHGB AFIAP
John Perriam, who is a member of both Exmouth Photo Group and Exeter Camera Club, joined us on our most recent Zoom meeting to give his presentation ‘Mainly Creative, Mostly for Fun’. It is the first time that we have had the pleasure of John’s company but I am sure it won’t be the last.
He began the evening by saying he has been having fun with creative photography for many years and this was backed up by him showing several images that had been taken way back in the days of film. By sandwiching two slide images together John achieved what we would now call an in camera double exposure and a current day composite image was attained by cutting out parts of a printed images and re-photographing them.
Moving forward in time to digital photography, John’s creative thinking is done both as he presses the shutter button and in post processing, by what seems like magic, he is able to include himself in an image, create a spaceship from a leisure centre and concoct small images in what look like water droplets using florists aqua beads, cooking oil and margarine. He explained how he managed to create the twirled background for an image of an eagle by using the image of the eagle itself and how to transform a rectangular landscape into a sphere.
After sharing hundreds of still photographs with us, the second part of John’s presentation was taken up with some of his audio visual productions. The sequence of images taken of Whitby Goths complemented the song ‘Human’ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man perfectly and the calming ‘Tranquillity’ by Llewllyn was an ideal choice of music for the composite images of landscapes and birds.
John very generously shared his ‘tricks’ with us and explained that you really don’t need much to create an outstanding abstract work of art. He hoped that not only had he entertained us for a couple of hours but that he had also inspired us have a go at and have fun with creative photography ourselves.