These painterly landscapes will give you some much needed photo inspiration this Spring

Amanda Newell creates impressionist, pictorial and abstract imagery using the camera as a paint brush and intentional camera movement techniques. Based in The New Forest and Dorset coastline, her work has been inspired by creative photography techniques such as multiple exposure, the surrounding landscape of her local area, and paintings by the likes of Monet and Renoir. She tells me more about her work and upcoming projects below…

Our emerging photographer series aims to shed a light on up-and-coming talent. Photographers are offered a platform to share their work with a wider audience through the AP channels, with the scope of furthering their careers. We also get an insight into their inspirations, the camera gear used and future aspirations, as well as the journey taken into photography – which doesn’t have to be the most traditional route!

We’ll be sharing the work of photographers on our website and social media and even in the magazine. If you have recently started your photography journey or are a student / graduate, share your work with us at [email protected]

When did you start taking photographs?

It was on a course studying Anthrozoology that I picked up a camera, initially to simply record information. I then got interested in visual communication and culture. I was fascinated by self-expression with a camera but, as happens, life got in the way and the camera ended up in the cupboard. Some years later I found myself very ill, I lost my business and my mobility over it, I was in real crisis when I pulled the camera from the back of the cupboard, dusted it off and thought ‘right, I don’t just want to do this now, I really need it.’

What genre do you tend to work mostly in?

I’m not faithful to genre in the traditional sense. My genre is expressing the landscape as I experience it through impressionism and pictorialism using camera movement (ICM) and other creative techniques.

It’s a really wonderful quirk of fate that the reason I first picked up the camera – recording information about connection between us and other animals and the landscape – is now the same reason I go out with the camera only now the camera is a part of that connection, a co-conspirator in connection, and the landscape a creative collaborator.

Tell us a little bit more about your photographic training (if any)?

I’m largely self-taught. There was no way I could afford to return to college, nor was I physically able. So, I sought out photographers to fill gaps in my knowledge. What I realised was often what they observed was as useful as what they taught. For example, a suggestion that students might be well advised to study art and design to grow their skills. Listening to that, I sought out online resources and read every book I could lay my hands on.

The late Bryan Peterson wisely suggested to me: just let instinct for a composition flow, don’t start overthinking it. Such a timely observation because I’d be falling into exactly that trap. I try and listen and reflect on these sorts of observations, look at art, design, study visual communication, think where I’m at and where I want to develop, decide what I need next… then go and find it.

What has been your biggest photographic obstacle to date?

Ironically the biggest challenge ended up being my most exciting shift. For a while, I lost the use of both my thumbs and was struggling to walk (I have systemic lupus). I couldn’t hold the camera easily, never mind depress the shutter and create camera movement. It was either give up completely or try to find ways to adapt as best I could. I was so immersed by then, and aware how important it was for my mental health to have this to hold on to that I was determined not to give up.

I switched the large DSLR for a Fujifilm mirrorless, used the timer or remote control. Adaptation came by beginning to hold the camera against my body and making subtle body movements taking the camera with me. And then using my breathing to co-ordinate, stabilise and move with the camera, instinctively to begin with, drawing on the training from my past professional life.

And something amazing happened…

Tell us more about your recent work?

Over some months I found I was creating a totally different style of painterly image I really loved, and my health was beginning to improve. As a therapist I realised I’d inadvertently stumbled into a photographic form of somatic therapy for myself by creating these tiny subtle movements with my body to move the camera. I then started intentionally developing “techniques” and working out ways to reproduce what I was doing and articulate it.

As an anthropologist I realised writing it all down might be a good idea, in the hope someone else might find it useful. That led me to thinking about how this whole process had unleashed creativity I never thought I possessed. And it’s grown from there. This all culminated in me writing a book I published last year, Intentional Camera Movement Demystified.