JILL TAYLOR

Jura Winter

The Jura is a chain of mountains some 1500 metres high on average lying north of Lake Geneva extending in a north easterly direction. It’s an area mainly of dairy farming where the cows laze in the summer sun but are then brought to the lowlands to remain indoors for the winter snows.

Winter is the season when this area changes the most. Gone are the green fields and endless woods of similar fir trees. The cold season brings a much more graphic appearance as the snow highlights the shapes and forms of this rural landscape. It’s as if the cold, crisp weather and more dramatic skies sharpen up the outlines. For me, despite the freezing temperatures, the pleasure of walking there is much greater than in the hot summer months.

Jill Taylor LRPS

My two degrees of Anatomy and Physiology from Bristol university and Optometry from Manchester university have been a useful basis for my interest in photography. Having started in the days of 35mm film cameras (I still possess an Olympus OM1 film camera) and use of my own dark room, I moved onto digital cameras in 2013. I bought myself the digital OMD EM1 and found a suitable adapter to enable me to use my old Olympus Zuiko lenses. I’m still learning the differences and parallels between the old and newer methods, especially in black and white photography. My thirty year plus monochrome prints still show the richness of the deep blacks, something I find not so easy in digital photography. Now retired and having invested in a full format camera and professional printer plus the forever evolving software is quite a lot to keep up with. All this plus membership of the RPS, the Swiss chapter’s activities and subscription to the Landscape SIG, keep me busy.