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Terry Donnelly talks to Mike Mcnamee - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5 6

by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2015

For your montages do you have a stock of images or do you go and shoot bespoke?
Everything in my composite work is photographed by me. I prefer to not use any stock images or elements, as I believe the work is not really my own if it has elements from another author in them. This means I do shoot a lot of backgrounds, skies, textures, in fact anything I see on my daily travels that catches my eye. I love abandoned buildings or areas, and use them a lot in my composite work. If I have a firm idea in my mind for an image, I will go and find the different elements I need to make that image and photograph them; other times I might have an idea and browse through my catalogue of images and see if there are images in there that meet my ideas. Sometimes I can simply be reviewing images in my catalogue and an idea comes to mind.

Whilst I really enjoy making composite images, I'm a firm believer that this method of making an image, should never be used in place of good solid photographic skill. We are photographers first and foremost; having the ability to composite sits on top of the photography, and that base must be good before we proceed to the next level by way of compositing.

Tell us about the photographers who have influenced your work and why.
There are so many who have influenced my work, friends I shoot with, people I have met over the years. I'll mention just three photographers though. My good friend, Glyn Dewis, is one of the hardest working, caring, sharing people I know. It's always great to meet up with Glyn, it's almost like having an MOT on my photography. Glyn always seems to point me in the right direction and has great advice to share not only from a photographic and editing perspective, but on the direction of, and the business side of photography.

Ronald Koster is another good friend of mine who has had an influence on my work. Ronald is a Dutch photographer, and his images and lighting skills are off the scale. Ronald's philosophy and approach to his own work has steered me to produce more of what I want to produce in an image, instead of perhaps being swayed by trends or what is popular.

Redemption is quite a deep image, it was created based on my feelings at the time. Some images we see with our eyes, others we see with our hearts, and for me this image falls in to the latter. It can be interpreted by the viewer in many ways of course, and I've seen some people lost for words when viewing the image, as they struggle with their feelings. I worked on the photograph of the model, by changing her features, then using brushes, layers and masks to create the parts of the head spinning away. The men either side of the image are of the iron statues of Another Place by Antony Gormley situated on Crosby beach, and the hand rails came from The Millennium Bridge in London. It can be an unsettling picture, but I think in part that is what makes it an attractive image.

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1st Published 01/06/2015
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:36

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