Lecture

We welcome Astrid McGechan with her illustrated lecture “Feel the Land - Photography & Emotion”

Astrid believes that photography and emotion go hand in hand.

When Astrid started out in photography years ago, she did not think much about what she felt when seeing something she wanted to photograph: she just picked up the camera and pressed the shutter button to capture what she saw.

Astrid held her first exhibition in 2010, where a visitor told her that she was going through difficult times with her family. The visitor explained that looking at Astrid’s photographs made her feel much better, they conveyed a sense of harmony, beauty and calm. She returned twice over the following two weeks, each time silently taking in the work.

Astrid realised then that being able to convey an emotion with her photographs is very important to her. So, she started to try and be more aware of what she feels when exploring a scene, and determine what influence her state of mind has on the resulting photograph. Over time, this process has helped her to change the way she made her photographs, and, hopefully, to produce photographs that convey feelings and thoughts and thus evoke an emotional response in the viewer.

In this lecture Astrid will explain how she tries to capture her emotions of the moment in a photograph. She will be showing a selection of her images to illustrate the various techniques that she has found helpful, and will take us on a light-hearted journey through her creative process, and should appeal to all levels of photographers, irrespective of their preference of subject matter.