Projected Digital Image League Competition (6th and Final Round) - Appraisal by David Steel DPAGB
Tues 23rd Apr 2024 7:30pm - 10:00pm
About David Steel DPAGB
Though I started photography many years ago and have a strong darkroom background, my work these days is predominantly digital for convenience. My day job is in IT and so photography remains mostly a leisure pursuit though I do take it seriously. I am an active member of Cambridge Camera Club and lecture and judge at camera clubs throughout East Anglia and beyond.
If there is a genre I enjoy, it is street photography or photojournalism and I particularly enjoying capturing people in their natural environment. I also have a liking for monochrome photography and the two go together so well. Perhaps it is because we associate photojournalism with the gritty photographs seen in the newspapers years ago or the reportage work reproduced in the long defunct Picture Post magazine. Maybe it’s because monochrome can better portray a feeling or mood or perhaps it’s our imagination that makes a monochrome image what we want it to be without the colour of reality pre-empting our thoughts.
You will see a strong ‘people’ theme throughout my website. Though I enjoy most forms of photography from natural history to landscape, it’s still people that ticks the box for me. I make no excuse for it. People are all around us and it’s people that make the world go round.
Our eyes see many different things. Our minds see even more. Photography is an expression of what our mind sees in the world around us. It is a means of communication. It doesn’t matter whether the image really represents reality since it has already been interpreted, and changed to some degree, by film or electronics.
Who is to say whether what I see is any more reality than what you see? Unless the image is to be used in a court of law, the final image is what we wish others to see – our interpretation, our thoughts, our feelings, our communication, our individuality. Our Mind’s Eye.
– David Steel