Virtual Meeting, 'The Expressive Landscape '- Tuesday 8th June 2021.

 

At its Zoom meeting on Tuesday 8th June, Morpeth Camera Club welcomed guest speaker, Colin Westgate from
Colchester Photographic Society, who gave an illustrated talk entitled, ‘The Expressive Landscape’. His talk was
aimed at showing the difference between landscape images that merely record the scenery and those that he
felt expressed more by (in his words) ‘Saying something to the soul’, making you feel that you love the image
or experience an emotion such as excitement.

Colin started by explaining that he had started photography with a simple film camera back in 1959 and then
went on to show many of his landscape images, starting with copies some of his early pictures - black and white
photos that he had produced by developing his own prints in a darkroom, before progressing to images originally
printed from colour slides (transparencies), before moving to digital photography. During the evening Colin treated
members to a vast array of landscape images, from many different places, eloquently explaining how he had used
different approaches to producing photos that he considered to be expressive.

Many of these illustrated the importance of lighting conditions especially around sunrise and sunset as well as the
showing how weather conditions such as mist, rain and storms can help produce images that invoke an emotional
response, whether that be calm, happy and peaceful or more dramatic and stormy. Colin also talked about the
composition of images showing the importance of including items of secondary interest that improved their overall
quality, making them more interesting and giving them balance. He also showed the value of focusing smaller
parts of the landscape (e.g parts of a waterfall, small groups of trees) to produce more intimate images.

While many of Colin’s images were straight forward photographs, accurately reproducing what he saw in the
landscape, others were made more expressive by using different techniques when taking the them. These
included using filters, to add colour or make the images diffused and abstract like, to adjusting the exposure
times to cause a blurring effect. Examples of this included using exposure times around 1/8 second to show
movement in water in waterfalls. He also illustrated how many of his images had been made more expressive
by digital manipulation of the original images - often by altering the brightness and contrast of all or just parts
of the images.

During his presentation club members were treated to seeing an impressive array of landscape images from
mainly UK locations including Sussex and Essex where Colin has lived and many visited during photographic
workshops that he had run in the past, including Scotland, Scottish isles, Northern Ireland and Northumberland.
He also showed a number of landscape images taken abroad finishing his presentation with a set of very
impressive pictures captured during his many trips to Iceland. These included photos of hot springs, ash
covered scenes resulting from volcanic activity, beaches covered with lumps of Ice and brilliant displays of
the northern lights.

 

At the end of the evening, that was laden with some outstanding photography coupled with much useful
practical information for members, John Barnes (the chairman) thanked Colin for his excellent presentation.

Glyn.