“HOW IT ALL STARTED”
I would like to bring you back to the beginning of the year 2016. Besides my job as a flight attendant I felt that I was looking for more depth in things I did. I felt this especially when I was on the road with my camera. I think it’s good for you to know that I had just bought my first DSLR camera in 2014. I did not know much about how to use it and mostly I just pressed the shutter on the automatic mode without thinking.
I always liked photography, partly because I am a visually orientated person and because I travel a lot I get exposed to the most beautiful sceneries in the world. These kind of places and people you don’t want to capture with just an iPhone. I wanted to capture all this beauty and stories with a real camera and after quite a period I wanted to get rid of this shooting on automatic mode and clicking just for clicking without any purpose. I wanted to convey images to tell stories to inspire others and to throw down the gauntlet to let us think about our existence.
I decided to sign up for a part time photography course at the photo academy in Amsterdam. In fact, the seeds of my current project were laid immediately in the first lesson. I was asked the question:
“Wendy, what would ‘you’ like to tell the world with your photography?”
It was a question to which I did not immediately know the answer and it has kept me busy in recent years. I now know the answer and I will come back to it later.
I stopped the training at the photo academy after one year. Why? I couldn’t afford it anymore and on top of that it was quite intensive to do all the assignments and combine it with a fulltime job as a full time flight attendant. Besides that I found out that I am not that kind of person who can be creative under regimental conditions. And also for me the type of assignments were too flowery, too up in the air. I don’t like to stage my photos too much and I got really nervous of all these technical tasks. I am more the ‘what you see is what you get-type of person’. I would like to work intuitively from what I feel and I want to get inspired by what I see, think, smell and hear! So I prefer to work outside with a preference for natural light and preferably I shoot when I travel.