Erica Oram: The View From Here

The Society held its first Zoom meeting of winter program with Erica Oram from Sheffield as the speaker. Her entertaining talk was titled “The View From Here”. As a busy healthcare worker she fits her photography around work and family. As a photographer she likes to push herself out of her comfort zone by experimenting in different techniques with her camera. An eye for faded colours and geometric shapes giving her photographs a distinctive atmosphere.

Her itinerary of pictures took us on a tour from Sheffield to Merseyside, on to Paignton in Devon, then to Scarbourgh and Great Yarmouth.

Photographs taken on family visits to Ayrshire, Northern Ireland, Brittany and Tenerife allowed her to demonstrate her skills with a camera. Erica keeps her camera around her neck switched on with the focus set ready to take her pictures as she walks around her chosen locations. She has been experimenting in the techniques of longer exposure and moving the camera whilst taking the shot thus introducing blurring and stretching of the subject photographed.

Using her computer she is also experimenting with the current trend in photography of “layering” by putting eight exposures on top of one of the other to create unique pictures. Facial expressions are the focal point for many of Erica’s pictures so she attends amateur sporting events for interesting shots and the mainstay of many photographers “street photography”.

Pictures in mono taken inside a prison that is now a prison museum using her tripod and herself as a model were quirky and some, simply stunning. Like all good things it came to an end with our president Chris thanking her on our behalf for an inspiring evening.