Outdoor Photography

February 2018 Outdoor Photography 73

Each month we publish the best images from those submitted for our Reader Gallery. Turn to

page 70 to fi nd out how to enter your work using our online system. Here is this month’s winner...

Winner Lynn Fotheringham

READER GALLERY

I was a textile and wallpaper

designer for many years, but

had always wanted to study

photography. When I closed

my last business (in 2014), my

husband encouraged me to

spend the newly found time

pursuing my interest. I am

self-taught, so everything I know technically

I have learnt from books and from YouTube.

However, I think composition and colour is

instinctive, and I am fortunate that it comes

easily to me, although I am always looking

for ways to learn more and to improve my

composition skills.

People have described my work as ‘minimalist’

and ‘enigmatic’, but I would use vague terms

such as ‘abstract’ and ‘impromptu’, as well as

‘waving the camera around a bit to see what

happens’ (focus stacking is not my idea of

how to have fun with photography!). Once

I had fully grasped the technicalities of my

relatively simple camera, a Canon EOS 100D,

and the conventions of traditional landscape

photography, I realised that while landscape is

my favourite visual discipline, the usual way of

expressing and recording it can be limiting, and

also very competitive. I wanted to fi nd a way of

communicating the elements of landscape that

didn’t rely on a full-frame camera with a very

wide lens, a low view point and getting up at

the crack of dawn to wait for hours for the light

to be right. Instead, I have developed various

abstract techniques to try and capture what I am

looking for when I’m out walking the dog in low

light, in the rain, in the middle of the day; I aim

for a sense of place rather than a clear record.

I love Lightroom and the process of editing

images, and I also use Photoshop to make

multiple exposure images because my basic

Canon doesn’t have a multiple exposure

function. I have a number of personal rules

around the use of Photoshop, but the main one is

that I don’t want to make an image that wouldn’t

have had a chance of being made using fi lm.

Moving forward I want to explore fully

what can be done with a digital camera and

continue fi nding alternative ways of recording

the landscape. This type of photography is

also propelling me back towards painting and

drawing, and I hope that my photography will

develop further because of this.

I would, of course, like my work to be seen

by a wider audience, but I am more interested

in making images than in promoting and

marketing them. However, I have had some

success with my images. In 2015 I was one

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