Community News
Clarence River Arts Festival: meet the Photography judge
Noted local photographer, Lyn Hope, is the 2016 judge for the Photography section at the July 2016 Clarence River Arts Festival, to be held at Maclean Showground from 8-10 July. Lyn was formally trained at Sydney Technical College (Ass Dip Photography). She has had experience over three decades in commercial, editorial, public relations and fine art photography.
On her return to the North Coast from Sydney, Lyn went on to study painting, and founded Wylah Designs, a hand painted clothing business, between 1990 and 2001. Her work as an artist and as a clothing designer has been widely exhibited and awarded and is contained in collections at Grafton Regional Gallery and Rouse Water.
Film making was a natural extension of her image making and in 2009-2010 her film “Bed” travelled Australia as part of the World of Women film festival.
More recently (2012-2016), Lyn has been teaching film making in the Northern Territory, with a strong emphasis on photographic principles.
Lyn retains her passion for photography, sustained since buying an SLR with her first pay, at age fifteen. She says: “It’s about seeing the world from a different angle than is possible from a cursory glance, making the ordinary extraordinary, and evoking emotions in the viewer. I want people to feel, not just see”.
“To be a truly successful photographer you not only need a good eye and creativity, but you must have the technical skills to execute that vision,” she says. And of course, the technology of digitisation makes the new world of photography an exciting place to be.
“I remember in my last year of study a teacher saying – to mass laughter – that one day we would all be sending pictures down a telephone line. From the very beginning I was interested in the surreal, in making images that in the digital age can easily be created in Photoshop. But back then the image making process was dealt with either in camera, in the darkroom, or both. Figuring out how to achieve the final image was always part of the fun. Nowadays the computer screen has revolutionised photography and my techniques, and so anything is possible.”
“These days my work is very ‘dreamscape’. I have an infra red camera and am really enjoying seeing the world from yet another perspective, one where trees glow with energy, and humans emit an ethereal light. Infra red photography highlights the notion that all is not necessarily as it seems, and there is much in this world that lies beyond our perception and understanding”.
Entries for the Photography section close on Monday 27 June. Entry forms are available locally from Ferry Park Gallery in Maclean, from its website at www.ferrypark.org, and from Yamba Picture Framing in Angourie Road, Yamba.
Alison Merrin