Last updated at 15:17, Wednesday, 03 March 2010

Photographer Anne Wallis of Rockfish Photography exhibits her work at the Great Escape Coffee Shop at Moota Garden Centre throughout March 2010.

Rockfish Photography – Anne Wallis in her own words

Anne Wallis – born in Birmingham ‘forty-something’ years ago, but living in Carlisle since 1996, married to Martin with 2 children.
The idea for Rockfish was conceived in 2008 – I had always enjoyed taking photographs, but it was innovative design concepts, the use of textured papers and different framing presentation which brought a lot of positive comment and made us realise there could be a future in producing similar images for sale.

We want our images to convey a sense of calm, to stimulate a special memory, a place where we can lose ourselves in our thoughts or just to enjoy the scene. We use a fine art printer, working to archival standards, then prints are hand deckled to produce the distinctive rough edge. We have also introduced canvas as a medium which provides a contrasting presentation.

I have really enjoyed the opportunity of travelling to Europe to take photographs for Rockfish – ‘it’s a hard life’. I have travelled to Barcelona, Lisbon & Venice in the last couple of years, specifically to take pictures, and family holidays are very much taken ‘with camera’, trying to juggle business, creativity, rest and relaxation, a husband and two children. I will have visited New York just before the exhibition at Moota opens, and a have a dream list of places further afield ‘for another year’.

One of the main reasons for taking pictures in Europe is that the natural light enhances the images, and often the building structure lends itself to more thought-provoking shots – in Barcelona’s Park Guell, and at Lluc Monastry for example. I have been taking pictures which are slightly ‘different’ for years, many of them architectural images, and met a friend recently who reminded me that I was taking pictures of windows and doors over 15 years ago! I am not at all technically minded – I am not trained in photography, but I have an eye which sees things in a way others find attractive. I like to convey what I have seen and the way I have seen it, so none of our images are digitally enhanced or manipulated – there are practical advantages to digital photography, but in many ways I would have been happy to continue using film.

In the past 12 months we have developed a range of greetings cards, as well as developing our websites to enable us to showcase our work to a bigger audience.

You can find us at www.rockfishphoto.co.uk

The Great Escape Coffee Shop

The Great Escape Coffee Shop holds monthly exhibitions of local artist's/photographer's work and  is located next to Moota Garden Centre on the A595, between Cockermouth and Bothel. www.mootagardencentre.co.uk

First published at 23:30, Saturday, 16 May 2009
Published by http://www.cockermouthlocal.co.uk