Kenny’s Creative Journey

This is a brand new presentation built around my love of ‘Creative’ photography.

I have been interested in the creative side of our hobby for around 20 years. Initially, i was simply trying to get the best out of my images. I remember building ‘Extended Dynamic Range’ images before HDR was commonplace. I call it EDR, because my images didn’t have the horrific garish look of typical HDR images of that time. Modern day HDR is a different beast entirely.

I then started seeing a lot of ‘composite’ images and learned how to produce a few.

During Lockdown I ran 20 weekly competitions including a ‘Best of Lockdown’ for my camera club.

This produced a large number of images that would have sat in my archives never to be seen again. I started submitting to photographic salons, both in the UK and internationally and started seeing a lot more creative photography. Some of the salons even had Creative sections. This gave me the impetus to gather some more distinctions to add to the CPAGB I gained back in the 1990’s.

I have always taken inspiration from other photographers including Stan Farrow and more recently Lynda Hainey amongst others. 

This presentation is in two parts.

I start off by showing some of my creative images, failures as well as medal winners.

We look at what makes a creative image.

Then I will deconstruct a few of my more successful images, showing how they were originally made and how I would make them today with the advances in technology.

After the break, I give the audience free reign over my photographic archives. I present around 15 years worth of raw files and together we will attempt to create an image. I don’t expect to produce a medal winning image during the evening, the intention is to show you my thought processes and some “on the hoof” problem solving. There will also probably be some panicking as I frantically attempt to composite some random images

Kenny McLean CPAGB BPE2* AFIAP GM.APS GPU CR-2