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ARTS&LEISURE
178
June14
CAMERA-RADERIE
JADEMcLEANmeets fivewomen
who have become friends while
exploring Singapore – one photo
at a time.
When I ask Australians Kerry and
Lianne, New Zealanders Bronwyn and
Christine, and Sandra from Holland
how they forged their friendship in
Singapore, they all mime drinking. I
know immediately that my half hour with
this fun-loving group won’t be boring.
Ostensibly, it’s Kerry’s turn to pick the
next spot for their weekly get-together,
but it’s a majority decision that the
mojitos at Luke Mangan’s Salt at Raffles
City are the best in town. When it comes
to the location for their weekly group
photography outing, however, it’s not
such a foregone conclusion.
“We’ve all got these macro-lenses that
do close-up pictures,” says Lianne, “so
rather than heading out somewhere, we
might all spend an afternoon where we
just stay in, squirt water on a flower and
wait for a dewdrop!”
Between bouts of raucous laughter,
they admit that they have a brainstorming
session a few days before a shoot, to
decide where to go and which lenses
to use.
But their photography group is not
just a creative ruse for mojito-quaffing.
The group has travelled the region
together with their cameras – including
to Cambodia, Myanmar and Bali. Bhutan
is next on the list for Sandra, Christine
and Lianne.
How did you all meet?
Lianne:
On the second day of a
photography course we’d all enrolled
in, one of the girls suggested going out
for a drink afterwards. Then, once the
course ended, we all said, ‘Well what are
we going to do now?’ So we agreed to
meet the following week to take photos.
We usually pick an area in Singapore
and go and photograph it, so we’ve
seen a lot of the island that we probably
wouldn’t have seen otherwise. We walk
around temples, we head out to Joo
Chiat or East Coast Park; if there’s a
festival going on, we’ll go to that – we
recently went to Chinatown and, of
course, we go to the annual Thaipusam
parade in Little India.
We have now t aken seve ra l
photography courses together, either
in a studio or online. They’re lots of fun.
One of our first challenges on a course
with Karen from Baobab Photo was to
photograph a still life, using shoes as
the subject. We were doing everything
to get the most interesting shot – even
hanging shoes from our windows!
EL: What’s been your hardest
challenge so far?
Christine:
We did an online course
where we had to choose a word from a
list – danger, empathy, loss, indifference
– and depict that word with your photo,
but we weren’t allowed to use people.
Lianne:
If you’re doing a course and
the rest of the group aren’t doing it and
you’ve got an assignment, guess what
everyone will be doing that weekend!
I think the more we do this the more
Photo by Karen Lucas