We were pleased to welcome Ken Scott ARPS back to the club to give his new lecture “It’s All in the Mind”. Ken is a man of many parts. We know him through his photographic work which includes lecturing, judging Camera Club and County wide competitions and as the author of books on photography. He also organises the training of photography judges in our region and we all know how difficult their task is from our “I’ll be the Judge of That” evening. Outside of photography Ken is a keen mountaineer, a qualified cricket coach and by profession a psychologist.
This lecture overlapped Ken’s expertise in photography and psychology – indeed he suggested that photopsychology might be the subject of the lecture. It was obvious that the speaker and the subject were of great interest as we had a “full house” with visitors from Steyning CC, Bognor Camera Club and Crawley Camera Club – very good to see you all.
The lecture was interactive with Ken posing a good number of conundrums, observational tests and brain-teasers. The reactions from the audience were generally pretty smart although for many questions there were no right or wrong answers – although none of us saw the dolphin in the rose. After Ken had pointed it out we all saw dolphins everywhere of course.
Ken then covered how the mood of a photograph was affected by colour choice, point of view choice of lens etc., but behind it all is the vision to see subject matter for successful photographs.
This was a different type of lecture from the more typical technical presentation – there was none of the “use this lens, this aperture, this ISO and get a good photograph ” type of instruction – nor was there any “press these buttons in Photoshop (or whatever software) to get this effect”. It was all much more philosophical, subtle and wide-ranging than that.
We all heard the same lecture but I think everyone got something different from it and all would come away being convinced to different degrees of the importance of Photopsychology. Those who regard photography as largely a technical exercise would possibly be more sceptical than those of a more creative bent. Likewise those, such as wildlife photographers, for whom finding the subject is paramount, might be less fascinated by Photopsychology than those striving to make works of art from commonplace subject matter.
Photography is a broad church – a unique fusion of the technical and the creative. And whichever approach you favour – well that is “All in the mind”.