Dinah Jayes

I had a camera for my 50th birthday and joined my local Photographic Society in order to find out how to take pictures. As I had no experience of photography or photographers until that time, I had no idea that, in Smethwick PS, I had picked a good club to join as they are one of the largest clubs in the country. The members were also very welcoming and supportive to a novice. There were also experts in every field of photography ready to help. I spent a few years in the darkroom both at the club and in my darkroom in the bathroom and gained an LRPS distinction. I started to enter club competitions and was quite successful.

I tried still life , studio work ,landscapes and some nature photography and enjoyed all the different genres, and also the field trips they involved. I moved over to a digital camera in 2005 and reluctantly gave up my darkroom/bathroom and bought a computer. I am still battling the computer and the software as I am not of the computer generation and it is a steep learning curve. The digital medium also meant I could make colour images as well as black and white. I feel I am just beginning to find a style of photography that seems to suit me and I am enjoying making images digitally at last.

I gained a DPAGB distinction and AFIAP. In 2014 I gained a MPAGB which was very encouraging. I think a creative style of image appeals to me as I think of the images as illustrations for the stories inside my head. My still life images are also great fun to do and very therapeutic as I can work whatever the weather with very few artefacts and without spending a lot of money.

I am hoping to do some more landscapes and street photography this year with my micro four thirds camera which is small and easily carried. The other area of interest is in alternative processes such as Cyanotypes and Van Dyke Brown and Salt prints which I do with a small band of likeminded photographers at Smethwick. I would like to begin to look outside camera club photography and pursue a more personal style in my photography but whatever images I make, photography has given me an identity of my own. For most of my life I have been wife, mum, teacher and granny. Now I can add Photographer!