Late Start No Handicap To Photographer

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31784, 14 September 1968, Page 2

Late Start No Handicap To Photographer

An 81 - year - old Christchurch woman has proved it is never too late to learn. At the age of 70 Mrs Beryl Wright took up photography and since then her colour slides have won her international recognition.

“I used to do a lot of gardening and when I saw someone else’s slides of flowers I thought it would be fun to take some,” she said yesterday. “I did a little by trial and error but it was only by joining the Christchurch Photographic Society that I gained my knowledge of the subject. Some of the members are international judges and it is through the criticism of these people that you learn.” More Adventurous

Mrs Wright’s interest in her new hobby grew, and she soon had her husband and daughter taking slides too. From entering in local dub

competitions, she grew more adventurous. Her first major achievement was winning a gold medal in an international salon at San Francisco in 1963, the first overseas’ competition she had entered. Since then, Mrs Wright has entered a number of contests in the United States, with marked success. One of her entries was held back and sent around the country as part of an exhibition. Acceptances in Singapore and Hong Kong have also been added to the list of successes and. four years ago, Mrs Wright won the Japanese Asahi Pentax Competition, which had 150,000 entries. Her slide, “Deepening Shadows,” a landscape taken near Timaru, won her nearly $lOOO worth of photographic equipment. “I really like good landscape work if I can get it. My husband and I try to get away once a year, preferably to the south where there is such a variety of scenery,” she-said. “I think the South Island is a photographer’s paradise?’ “Too Valuable”

A camera is only taken along when she thinks there is a definite chance of using it. “Cameras are too valuable to carry around these days,” she explained. Mrs Wrighit does not rely on landscapes, people and natural history for all her slides. She does table top photography. For one prize-winning slide, entitled “Adrift” with a small boat as the subject, she used cardboard for mountains- in the background and glass for the sea. Dry glass made up the foreground of vegetation. In a slide called “Crazy Cats,” she put letter racks shaped as cats behind glass.

giving a distorted effect The background was of modern design. Mrs Wright dressed tiny ballet-girl dolls and posed them on a stage for “Command Performance,” another coloured slide. The audience in the lower foreground was figures cut from strong black paper. Imagination “I am always aiming for something different. You need a vivid imagination. Sometimes you get to a stage where it is difficult to advance as a photographer because it is hard to think of something new.” Mrs Wright’s photographs are all taken for pleasure and she would recommend the hobby to anyone. A former committee member, she is one of more than 200 members of the Christchurch Photographic Society. Mrs Wright, who looks 20 years younger than her age, had a confession to make when a reporter and photographer of “The Press’ called. “I loathe having my photograph taken,” she said. The photograph shows Mrs Wright looking at one of her colour slides.