Part 1-Why do I want to become Visually Literate?

I was not artistic at school and chose Science options at O and A Level. I gained a degree in Textile Technology and spent the first ten years of my career in Technical and Commercial roles in the knitting industry.
In 1983 I was fortunate enough to be appointed as Business Development Manger for a Division of the Courtaulds Group. My small Team was tasked with making woven and knitted fabrics and showing these to potential customers in order to encourage them to buy the cellulose acetate textile fibres our company produced. Up to this point in my career  I had not had any involvement in the design of fabrics or end products made from them. In this new role I was responsible for the selection of colour ranges, the design of new fabrics and new end products. A significant portion of this activity was directed at products for the apparel industry and this necessitated an appreciation of design and fashion trends.
I was fortunate enough to have a small team of designers who monitored fashion trends and I was able to work with them to ensure that the new ideas we generated were likely to be "on trend."
Inevitably I found myself participating in presentations to fabric manufacturers trying to encourage them to include our fibres in their new ranges in an attempt to stimulate new business.
These presentations were mostly made to the development staff of fabric manufacturers whose knowledge of fashion trends was at a similar level to my own. Less often presentations were made to retailers whose knowledge of fashion trends far exceeded my own. Despite my personal  lack of design and fashion knowledge, with the help of my team, we were judged to be successful.

The Courtaulds Group was involved in the manufacture of products for a wide range of Industries and became increasingly aware of the importance of developing a corporate identity. The Group hired a design consultancy to create brand symbols and logos and define rules for the use of these throughout the diverse group. As part of this I attended presentations by these consultants to have these rules explained. It was clear that I was not the only Manager who was struggling to understand and apply these rules. A series of seminars was held for those defined by the consultants as "visually illiterate"and I was able to attend. The subject matter was entirely about applying the design templates for brochures, advertising and stationary. It did little to improve my understanding of fashion and fabric design.

My career developed into more Commercial roles in the Chemical and Tobacco Industry where fashion and design were not relevant factors.

Now I am retired I have much more time to develop my interest in photography and am learning a lot about using my camera to capture images of people, places and things. Some of the credit for my increasing skills in this area must go to Victoria Wilcox who founded the Derby Telegraph photography club, Togsquad. Their weekly challenges pushed me out of my comfort zone challenging me to take pictures of new subject in situations I had not previously tried. I also benefited from working alongside other more skilled photographers who were prepared to share their knowledge. I have become much more competent at creating images that are well focused, sharp and clearly represent the subject matter and have even had some of my images chosen for publication and competitions.

During the past 5 years I have  tried to move away from "representational" images towards ones that could be described as more "artistic" or "abstract". I am pleased with my early attempts some of which I will show you here.

Here is an image of Derby City Council House. I took 7 images from different positions moving around the building and then combined them using an application called Photo collage maker. I took this after seeing a presentation about David Hockney who often combined multiple canvases of the same scene. I was pleased that it was printed in my local paper The Derby Telegraph.

This image was taken through the leaded lights in my own front door and features my wife's treasured Red Mini.

This image was taken on the steps of the River Gardens in Derby and was achieved using a shutter speed slow enough to blur the movement of the pigeons

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This image was taken in the hold of the Trincomalle in the Harbour at Hartlepool. It was taken in near darkness so came out a dark grey monochrome. As I took the image in RAW I was able to adjust the white balance to create the purple colour.

This was a more considered shot. I took a number of pictures of a bunch of red Valentine's roses and looking for a way to make a more interesting image I tried Intentional Camera Movement. In this technique I shut down the aperture to lengthen the exposure and then deliberately moved the camera during the exposure to blur the image.  There was a lot of trial and error in this shot and I selected the best result.

This is another Intentional Camera Movement exposure take in a wooded area on Stanton Moor. The bright areas in the sky created streaks that give the image an ethereal quality.

This was a deliberate attempt to create an unreal image of a three headed man. This self portrait was taken in my garage. With the camera on a tripod and the garage dark I set the camera for a 20 second exposure. I had an old speedlight strobe and reduced the light output with black tape. I sat with the flash on my knee pointing upwards and pressed the flash trigger three times during the exposure, moving my head between each flash. I am very pleased with the result

More recently my wife, Moy, and I joined Ockbrook and Borrowash Image Club run by Valerie Dalling, and were pleased to be given the chance to listen to presentations from a number of skilled photographers. Probably the most thought provoking of these were by Chris Upton on Composition, by Chris Gilbert on Landscape Photography and Chris M Dale on Intentional Camera Movement. These presentations and practical sessions organised by the club enabled me to further improve my techniques.

Moy and I were pleased to be able to spend four days in West Wales with Chris Gilbert last year. This enabled us to gain experience in a wide range of situations and we learned a lot from his input. Chris  had some very well developed ideas on what makes some images more attractive and attention grabbing than others. His belief is that images that remind us of pleasant experiences or have subjects that are important to us are more likely to grab our attention. More controversially he believe that images that reveal things that we cannot see in real life trigger a reaction which makes us study an image more closely. An example of this is long exposure waterfall shots where the water becomes creamy.

I want to concentrate my efforts on producing images that will grab the attention of viewers and encourage them to spend a little time looking at them before moving on to the next. I have coined the phrase "arresting images" to describe pictures that achieve this objective.

It has become clear to me that understanding camera settings is only a small part of the art of photography. I observe that I lack skills in the selection of subjects, lighting conditions and composition. Although I am aware of the rules of composition I am unsure how to use them to created an attractive image. I am also aware that I do not sufficiently understand the meaning of good light and only rarely truly appreciate the way the light falls upon my potential subjects.

I now believe that my photography would benefit from exploring some of the principles of Art and Design so that I can use these in choosing subjects and taking images.