Seeing it through

Creativity, dedication, and orthodontics are all elements in the mix that makes Samantha Everton’s work some of the most exciting Photo Review has presented by an emerging photographic talent over the past two years.

‘I’ve lost count of the number of orthodontic braces I’ve removed,’ she says, explaining how she became so adept at Photoshop. The braces, along with opening squinting eyes, switching heads, and disappearing skin blemishes were all part of Samantha’s digital retouching job with a Melbourne portrait photographer. It helped pay the bills during completion of the elite but arduous RMIT photography degree, as well as sharpening those all-important software skills.

‘If you use Photoshop every day you learn more and more -plus of course we had classes in Photoshop at RMIT as well. Mainly it’s just practice and self-teaching.’

Samantha defines herself as a ‘digital photo artist’.

‘I montage photos and mix in a bit of design and sometimes some hand-colouring. I can take two days on the computer to put together a complex image.’

– Such as the society lady/lampshade/Dalmatian image reproduced here, which comprises five separate shots to film;’ put together hopefully seamlessly, so you can’t tell. Overall I want people to look at it and say ‘wow, what an image’, rather than ‘wow, that’s digital’.

‘I want it to be about the image rather than the technique.’

Not all her completed images are ‘post-capture’, but even when she does create in-camera, directly to film, it generally involves an advanced technique like double exposure or some fancy flash work.(Samantha has kindly contributed the caption text accompanying the images here, providing some insight into her techniques.)

Bucking the trend (or perhaps setting a new one) she uses film for capture -mainly a Mamiya medium format and a 4 x 5 studio camera, courtesy of her portrait studio gig. She then has her film images drum-scanned ‘by a gentleman who does nothing else, and only charges 70 cents per meg’. Then armed with extremely high-resolution files, she plies her unique alchemy at the computer.

‘I like the grain in film and also feel that in 100 years’ time it will still be there. There’s something intangible about digital files whereas you can physically store a negative or transparency.’

She cites Dali as an inspiration since childhood, and among photographers admires the startling, beautiful and often amusing work of Jerry Uelsmann (www.uelsmann.com).

‘I love surrealism, love Escher, love looking at a picture where there’s something extra if you look a little closer.

‘I read somewhere that the average person looks at a picture for seven seconds in a gallery, but if you look at mine a little longer you might find something else.’ (Check out the second Dalmatian in the picture on the wall in the aforementioned woman/lampshade/Dalmatian picture, for instance.)

Nothing happens by accident in Samantha’s work.

In one shot it was a particular piece of cording. After visiting countless specialist material stores she found it at a Kmart, of all places. For another she spent three days sourcing just the right piece of parquetry flooring, then dragged it along to the RMIT studio. To then go with the parquetry she wanted a particular pair of shoes -black and white spats -which were available in only one shop in the whole of Melbourne. She hunted them down, burning lots of her own shoe leather in the process.

‘I know exactly what I want and I’ll go to great lengths to get it because that’s what makes the shot. If I had used different shoes it just wouldn’t be the same.’

‘Going to great lengths’ has at various times involved buying four square metres of turf and rolling it out on her lounge room floor, or laying siege to a friend’s ‘renovator’s dream’.

‘One of the struggles when you are starting out is not having a studio -so you use any space you can.’ (You also rope your friends and siblings in as models, because they’re real, they work real cheap and they do what they are asked/told.)

One particular space was a changing room in a frock shop in the upmarket Melbourne Central shopping mall, which was transmogrified into a scene of fin de siecle sumptuousness with the ever-artful Everton touch.

This ability to not only see an image but also see it through distinguishes Samantha’s work, and has seen her win no less than five (count them!) awards in her final year, including a Gold and two Silvers in open competition in the AIPP Photographer of the Year awards, runner up as Victorian Student Photographer of the Year and the $5000 Steve Vizard award for the most creative final year portfolio.

Like the majority of students who make it through the RMIT course, she is taking up photography as a second career. (And like another emerging talent featured in Photo Review-Erin Davis -her first career was as a hairdresser.)

She also had a five-year stint travelling around the world in between.

‘That’s when I started realizing you could do whatever you want to if you put your mind to it. Before that I didn’t really think you could make a living out of art.

‘I don’t think I could have done this at 22,’ she admits. ‘One, because of the maturity and secondly, the dedication -you want to go out so much when you’re younger. I don’t know if I would have put as much effort in!

‘I feel like I pretty well gave up the last three years of my life, seven days a week, day and night.

‘It was a huge undertaking.’

– And, one hopes, it’s only the first step toward even more wonderful undertakings.