Post 12-Paul Sanders-What an inspiration!

Moy and I attended the Connected Exhibition at Patchings Arts Centre yesterday and listened to an inspirational talk by photographer Paul Sanders.

Paul started as an 18 year old taking Glamour shots, then moved into local newspapers and, eventually became Picture Editor of the Sunday Times. He found this job very stressful and resigned his post with the intention of imitating Joe Cornish and becoming a Landscape Photographer. He developed anxiety and depression and both his business and his marriage failed. He went to Beachy Head with the intention of committing suicide. Here he was befriended by one of the pastoral team who talked to him about his feelings and convinced him to change his mind. The pastors save the lives of 17 men each week and suggested he stop taking photographs to please other people and start taking photographs to please himself. After a long period of therapy he is much happier.
He went on to  suggest that we all consider fundamentally changing our approach to photography,  using it as a way of expressing ourselves and our feelings about the subjects we choose. We should take more time to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of a place and avoid an obsession with good light or bad light and the technical aspects of image making. He suggests we should only make images of subjects that catch our eye and make us happy. If we feel nothing when we make the image the viewer is likely to feel nothing. We should not be concerned with the number of "Likes" our images get but see positive comments as a bonus.
During his talk Paul showed us a large number of his photographs, most of which were in Black and White but, most unusually for a photographic presentation, almost never talked about his choice of camera or settings.

Paul's approach is very different to my own and I am struggling to decide how many of his suggestions to take on board. I have already embraced the idea of creating images that please me and not worry about other people's views. Despite this I am still keen to post them on social media to see if others like them as well. I will try to focus less on the techniques and camera settings and more on trying to recreate the atmosphere of the subject that caught my eye. I anticipate that I will find this very difficult but hope it will lead me to take images that I find more satisfying.

Following the presentation we walked around the grounds and tried to capture the atmosphere of an area inspired by Monet's garden. Here are two images I took that please me.