Hello all! :) so a while back I made a post explaining our plan to gather together and highlight some of our members photos... as a way of seeing the photos as a body of work... this morning we are going to start with Angele van den Heuvel, and her macros shots of flowers, but most specifically her sunflowers... thanks so much Angele for taking the time to answer my questions so thoughtfully. :) This post will remain pinned for 2 weeks and then well do another..and another. This will be an ongoing feature of TBCD. I hope you all enjoy getting to know Angele and her photos in a bit more depth, I know I have. Make sure you check out the comments section, as thats where most of the photos and commentary will be posted. Angele… First up, how long have you been with TBCD and what is your experience of it? Honestly I couldn’t tell you how long I have been with TBCD; like all families it feels like forever, but actually probably just over a year. My experience has been a positive one. It just gives and keeps on giving. When I “found” TBCD I was at quite a low point, struggling emotionally, financially and physically. Self esteem through the floor… I had studied commercial photography at the RMIT in 1976 but found it restrictive, elitist and snobbish, so dropped out to go travel around Australia to “find my calling” (never did) yet never lost my passion for photography. Over the years I became despondent and gave up a lot of passions and hobbies, so “finding” TBCD rekindled my love of the camera and its ability to see more than my eyes ever can….and the positive feedback has been a real confidence booster. How do you interact with it? Well, I try to keep within the bounds of the brief, a “morning walk” and it is my intention to always try to post before the sun is over the yard-arm. On occasions life has run away and I’ve missed that deadline, so if I thought my photo was “important” enough on the day I still try to sneak it in; but on most occasions if I find I have missed a deadline to post I go through a form of mourning, it feels like I have missed my therapy session and am forced to wait for a new appointment! The other thing I love is seeing other people’s photos. Often it is a familiar place and I enjoy seeing the different perspective. It’s like looking through another person’s eyes. All the overseas shots are seriously affecting my stability though...making me want to pick up roots and just travel! ☺ How did you find TBCD? Your page just popped up one day on my fb feed! Still no idea where you came from, wasn’t a recommendation or anything, just out of the blue…☺ You sunflower “series” really fascinated me… and was also very popular with other members… What do you think inspired these images? A fascination with the cycle of birth death and rebirth. I actually found this sunflower as a 2’ high seedling growing in a horse pat (I feed sunflower to my horses) in the laneway. This one somehow had gone through unharmed and managed to get a good grip on life. I knew if I left it there it would be trampled or eaten, and as it was the1 yr anniversary of my mother’s passing it seemed fitting to give it a chance, it was like she was sending me a message, so I pulled it out of the pat and brought it to the house where I planted it in my asparagus pot. Did you intend to do a series when you took the first photo? No, not really. It was more of a personal study for me of how the seedling grew against the odds to become a sunflower. The growing of the plant, the emergence of the head, and its size quite took me by surprise. I had spent some of my youth out Moree way where some farmers grew and harvested sunflowers, so for me, originally a sunflower was a blaze type of thing. I couldn’t understand the fascination that some people had with them. I had forgotten how amazing they really are and that they can become quite LARGE! So when this thing started unfurling it became a rush to do the chores so I could get back to see how it had changed and developed in the last 24 hours. Have you taken macro shots like this a lot before or is this new to you? I have always been a lover of macro. My commercial training forced me to look for the minutiae, to focus on the story in every picture. Definitely no happy snaps! But as I have a vision deficiency I love the way I can take a macro and then when it’s enlarged on the screen I can see a whole other universe that was previously hidden to me. So many people look at everything; I like to look at “something”. If you had to guess, why do you think this series was fascinating for the viewers? Perhaps because not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to get up close and personal with a sunflower? The colour is bright and cheery…I always found myself smiling as I walked away every morning. I hope it evoked this response in others as well. There is so much sadness in the world, so if I was able to make people smile and forget the sadness for just a minute or two, I am happy. Also I was posting these images at a time of great sorrow in Australia and beyond, the massacres, bombings and planes falling out of the sky…perhaps people just got to stop and take a deep breath? The titles or introductions you often give your photos I find poetic… and poignant. Do you think these through before taking the photos or do the words come after? I shoot from the heart, not the eye. I don’t think, I just do. When I see the images again later that’s when the words come. As I said before I found this one on the anniversary of loosing mum, so it seemed like a metaphor for her life, and so many others that were passing as I was watching the flower unfold; they just seemed fitting at the time.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 21:35:13 +0000
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