Michelle Kennedy

I started playing around with photography about 20 years ago when my son was born but only really used my camera for family snaps and taking photos of my kids growing up.

About 9 years ago I decided to start playing around with Photoshop and joined a local camera club to learn a bit more about the creative side of photography. Instantly I fell in love with digital composition.

I have a passion for digital composites (the process of using multiple images to create a final image), so I shoot a variety of different things to build my library of elements. I like to create images where animals are in place of people, so I’ll never turn down a trip to the Zoo.

The Commute.
I love giving animals ‘human traits’ and in this image I attempted to give each character their own personality and story. While they are all travelling on the same train they all appear to be there for different reasons. This is a digital composite image. Every element in the image has been photographed individually and layered in photoshop. I use masking tools to select my elements and a black brush tool to add all the shadows to ground my subjects in the scene. I use a variety of adjustment layers to help all the characters look like they are all a part of the same image.  

Brolga Stretch.
Taken late in the afternoon when the light wasn’t too harsh. The beautiful brolga was having a stretch and preening.

I also love to shoot portraits and macro. Both of these styles are entwined in my composite work and I have often used portraits as a basis for my creative images. My images are not just about a style of photography – the style of image creation is also important.

Firey
This portrait of my daughter is taken with natural light coming in from a window on the left and a very small LED placed to the right. I purposefully chose the contrasting colours of the teal background against the fiery red hair!

I have worked at Camera House in Erina NSW for just over 5 Years. Our store is full of people with different skills and talents. The people I work with are inspiring and I’m always learning. Our customers also benefit from the amazing staff we have here.