This was was a presentation from Laura Pearce entitled 'Don't Walk on the Grass' but was in fact the very opposite as Laura was encouraging individual creativity, a willingness to take a few risks and to 'think
outside the box'. Although Laura is still very much an amateur photographer, her work has been published in so many magazines that she must now be almost a professional. We saw many images from her model and fashion sessions and heard about some of the ways that breaking the rules could lead to far more interesting images. She was the first to acknowledge that many of her shots would fall foul of photography judges - in particular portraits with the top of the model's head cropped. Together with her emphasis on good colour balance, lead-in lines and the use of negative space, Laura's images were both creative and frequently dramatic. In the second half Laura presented a wide range of excellent prints - all A4 sizes mounted on 40x50 mounts as this is what she prefers. Viewed close up these demonstrated that Laura's technique matches her creativity.
So we left last night encouraged to 'embrace our inner rebel' and even to give it a name (so I'm calling mine Bob) but only time will tell whether the judges of our photographic competitions will always understand that creativity also means that we have deliberately stepped on the grass as the path is somewhat boring. (May have overstepped the metaphor there!).