Weird and Wonderful – ish – Phil Cooling – Friday 30th October 2020.

This evening we were joined by fine art photographer Phil Cooling. His presentation took us on a journey. He used to have a passion for 35mm film photography but then stopped taking photographs. After a gap of over 20 years he rediscovered photography using a Nikon D80 DSLR and Photoshop Elements processing software. His talk covered the period from re-discovering photography to his award winning FRPS panel in 2014.

He started by showing some of his processed images taken in his 1st year of digital photography. He described these as completely overdone in terms of processing, being over saturated and having grainy filters applied.

The presentation moved on to show us a range of different genres including urban, street, travel, sports, landscapes (mostly taken within a mile or so of his home), studio, portraits and humour.

After the break Phil showed us the natural history images he had taken and submitted for his ARPS. These were taken at a local lake and the images demonstrated Canada Geese and Mallard behaviours. These images had minimal image processing and showed Phil’s fieldcraft expertise .

Phil then took us on the next part of his journey by showing us several composite images. He spoke about with the emphasis being on getting the detail right such as reflections and shadows! The images taken for his FRPS panel illustrated this; also showing a clear coherence between the images with repeating themes throughout.

Our thanks to Phil for an interesting and informative evening. More of his work can be seen on his website – philcooling.zenfolio.com.