articles/Profiles/Terry-don-mike-page6
by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2015
We can work it out
Tell us about your 16x20 winner which was so admired at Convention 2015. How was it printed?
I was encouraged to enter the 20x16 Print Competition by Richard P Walton following a number of online conversations we had late last year. My subsequent entry resulted in me winning the Nouvou section, and then becoming the overall winner of the competition, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Richard for his encouragement. The title of the winning picture is 'We can work it out' and is one from my conceptual relationships series. I had photographed an abandoned property and this picture I felt a strong connection with; so I set about developing a narrative to the picture. I made a story of a man looking into a mirror at his wife, which signified him looking into his past, and linked the two worlds together, with a bottle of whisky on the floor. The picture in the mirror has his wife looking back towards him and she is to the right of the frame to signify her leaving. The room in the mirror is also lighter and cleaner, reflecting how his life used to be, in contrast to the room he now stands in alone, which is dark and grungy. It's a relationship picture between the man, his wife and his alcohol dependency. The picture of course, though, is open to different interpretations by different viewers. I think the picture manages to invoke an emotion in its viewers, and that is something I look to do whenever I can. The picture consists of four separate frames: the room, the man, the woman and the whisky bottle. I printed the winning picture on my Epson 3880 printer, onto Pinnacle Baryta 310gsm paper from Paper Spectrum. I've owned my Epson printer since 2010, and print all my exhibition and competition work on it. Printing our pictures is something all photographers should be doing. A digital representation of a picture, is just that, a representation or projection of the picture. Nothing matches the emotional impact of holding a print in your hands, and I was delighted to have seven of my prints win Merit awards in the 20x16 print competition, and then have two of those prints in amongst the 17 finalist prints - and the eventual overall winner.
There are 0 days to get ready for The Society of Photographers Convention and Trade Show at The Novotel London West, Hammersmith ...
which starts on Thursday 1st January 1970