What a fantastic talk we had last night!! And perhaps 'fantastic' is a good word for the images produced by our speaker, Janet Haines, who specialises in 'fantasy' images. As the title of her talk suggested, the ideas for her images starts in her head, she then shoots the subjects or component parts that are needed to make the final image that she has in her head. She also gave us useful information on putting a panel together, particularly interesting if we are thinking about entering the WCPF Kingswood panel competition. Some images were inspired by her dreams and some by the images that occur in her mind when she listens to music.

Not only are the final images amazing in many different ways, the component parts, particularly the portraits that are an integral part of her later images, were truly beautiful with great lighting and expressions and attitudes from the models.

I thought it was a truly inspirational talk and everyone will have got something useful from it, even those who do not 'do' composites or fantasy images; many of the skills she talked about were transferable to other types of images. As someone commented - where can we buy a can of creativity??!!

Her image making has gone through many stages, she now makes images to please herself not the judges - a good thought for all of us!! Perhaps easier to say when one has had such international success, achieved top awards on both sides of the pond and been accepted in numerous salons round the world!

She left us with a thought applicable to many situations: "Never stop learning, exploring and challenging yourself - keep on trying".