My Fellowship Journey: Shona Kebble

When I achieved my Associateship in 2005, little did I know that it would take me 17 years to be awarded a Fellowship from the Photographic Society of New Zealand.

During the first lockdown, I decided to get out my water drop kit, which I have had for some time, and see if I could produce anything worth putting into competitions. The Howick Photographic Society kept going, using Zoom during the lockdown, so we continued to have digital competitions. I spent many hours in my photography room, trying different formulas for the liquid, different flashes for the lighting, different timings for the splashes and different colours for the drops and backgrounds

Success was variable, from getting nothing for days to achieving some lovely shapes and splashes. As I was doing this, the idea for a Fellowship set was forming. After about two weeks of trial and error with the splashes I started to photograph some really amazing shapes. Several weeks later I had enough to trawl through and select the ones I liked the best. As I was doing this I was thinking about how the drops made me feel and what the shapes meant to me. Some drop shapes looked like actual things and others gave me an emotional feeling. I started writing down words to describe the drops and it soon developed into a list of emotions and experiences. That is when the idea of a journey through life could be the theme. I could see layers of meanings in each image and the idea and process became a personal journey as well.

I selected the best drops and then had to put them into some kind of order. The backgrounds were mostly produced using several pieces of coloured A4 paper. The water line in each image was at a different level so I decided to remove the line made by the edge of the bowl to give a seamless background from water into the colours. At first, I put the frame around the images with the titles in the frame at the top but decided to take the wording out as it detracted from the image. The Statement of Intent took some thinking about, and I went through many different edits.

Finally, my set was ready to submit. That was the scariest part of the process but once it was in I was able to relax, sit, wait and hope.