Rachel Fentiman

Photography has always been an underlying passion in my life, slotting itself comfortably in between my other passions, acting and composing music. Early in 2007, I did a private course with renouned photographer Colin Beard, who really crystallized my desire to explore photography further. For a while, I was photographing everything from people, nature, wildlife, you name it, and it was Colin who informed me of the need to focus on one subject at a time. I chose nature because where I live, you can’t escape the beauty of the environment no matter how hard you try. I adore macro photography as it lets you experiance life as though you are the size of an ant!
I use a Canon 400D and as a strict rule, do not digitally enhance anything that could not also be enhanced by usage of a traditional method. By this I mean, using film, in the dark room one can darken or brighten a photograph, so this same application is the only thing I adopt in my digital shots (I’m proud to say!). This means I have to learn to perfect a shot using the camera, instead of relying on my computer to fix everything. There is such a fine line between digital imagery and digital photography, and I pride myself in striving for the latter.