Editorial

By Paul Whitham LPSNZ

GENERALLY SPEAKING, PEOPLE develop in an art at a rate whereby it is difficult to state that something caused the shift in the way they perceive things. There are of course exceptions to this, such as if you went on a workshop to learn a new skill that you didn’t have before.

I started to write this at a time when the 2021 Honours Board had met, but I did not yet know whether I’d been successful or had failed in my attempt.

In the process of putting the set together, there had been many occasions when I questioned why I was doing this. Putting the set together was a challenge, taking both time and money. At the end of the day, was it really important to have a bunch of people telling me whether my work met a standard that they had set?

Equally, the letters that I would gain after my name had no real relevance beyond the amateur photography community. That would be different if I was doing photography as my career and seeking the honours within NZIPP.

Therefore, there were lots of times when I questioned why I was doing this.

In the first week of March, I finally managed to realise a concept that I had been developing for the best part of a year. I had visualised what the set would look like, and I had collected materials along the way. The shoot involved a makeup artist and a model, so I had to work with their availability. I wanted to incorporate fire, and that dictated that the shoot would be made outside. Additionally, the costume that I had made was quite minimal, so I needed to shoot when the weather was warm. As I wanted to have full control over the light, I was shooting in the evening. Obviously, shooting outside meant that we didn’t know if the weather gods would comply or wash it out. Fortunately the day was fine, but as I was putting the set together the wind came up and substantial anchoring was needed so that it didn’t fall over. The wind actually died away by the time we started to shoot.

As it turned out the shoot went without a hitch, and I shot around 270 images of which 65 were taken all the way through to final edit. This very high percentage was testament to the skills that the model brought to the shoot.

It was during the editing process that I suddenly realised that I was deploying all of the tips that had been recommended to fine tune the images that I had included in my Honours set.

It was a light bulb moment when I realised that in putting that set together, particularly in the polishing of the images, I picked up a new way of looking at my images and applying that to this shoot.

As it turned out my set was unsuccessful, and now I await the feedback. Based on that I may choose to resubmit in 2022 — or simply put it down to a lesson learned.