Due to illness, our planned speaker for last night's Zoom meeting was unable to join us. But Sarah had worked her magic and found us a replacement speaker. Julie Cowdy’s presentation was ‘The healing lens' :
After receiving her cancer diagnosis Julie had to find a way of coping with the stress and worry whilst she was going through her treatment and decided that focusing on her hobbies, activities that she loved, would be the perfect distraction. Having always been a creative person she had several creative pastimes to fall back on, most of which could be blended with each other.
Flowers are one of her great loves, both wild and cultivated. And with photography also on that list of things she loved to do, combining those was relatively easy – even on the days she had little energy and straying any distance from the house was difficult. She photographed the flowers in her garden and the flowers that dear friends sent to her. When she had more energy she could venture further afield and take photos of wild flowers such as the poppy fields near to her home.
But her creativity pushed boundaries leading to things such as writing on her prints, tearing through prints and creating new images with the torn pieces and stitching on her images to create or accentuate features. Julie also found the joy of not taking pictures with a particular purpose, or even theme, in mind but just for the joy of recording that moment in that place. She also enjoyed trying new ideas like the Orton Effect or taking one image and creating several versions of it through post processing. She also found that setting herself the task of looking for something specific helped her to notice things in the landscape that she might not have noted otherwise. A little project to go out and look for lines lead to pictures of tractor wheel tracks and fences and gates which might have been in the picture but not necessarily been the focus of that picture had she not been looking for them.
She also showed us a Photobook that she had created with images that would evoke memories, using poetry to strengthen the message of the picture. Her mindful photography, mixed media and even simple stitching became the perfect distraction tactics during her treatment. And her pictures illustrated the passing of the seasons through which she continued her treatment. And they seemed to represent a serenity and calmness that must have been so precious at that difficult time.