Medium Format Photography & Beyond – An Introduction

I emigrated to and worked in Western and Northern Canada from 1972-74 for the Hudson’s Bay Company in retail management including buying furs and selling skidoos laterally in the Arctic.
In 1975 I moved to Edmonton, Alberta and morphed an interest in Photography to selling cameras which taught me a lot about equipment. This put me in touch with a lot of people in the Photographic Industry and subsequently went to work for a studio where I learned about General Purpose Photography. One of my colleagues left there and opened his own studio and I went to work for him for 6 years learning and applying what I learned to various aspects of general photography, specialising in Audio Visuals Presentations.
From 1985-92 I worked as a Freelance Photographer mostly in Industrial and Commercial areas though still keeping close contacts with a company doing Audio Visual Presentations leading up to the Pre – 1988 Winter Olympics 21 projector slide show presented in the Calgary Tower (Alberta, Canada) viewed by over a million people.
During this time I also developed an interest in and began to teach photography workshops at the University of Alberta and began to look at passing on some of the incredible skills and talents I had learned from the largesse of my Photographic Mentors (Bruce Barnbaum, John Sexton, Cole Weston, Ray McSaveney, Huntington Witherill and the incomparable Jay Dusard) mostly in Black and White Photography as a Fine Art.
In 1992 I returned to the UK and continued to work commercially specialising in photographing paintings and architecture.
Presently I am semi-retired and photographing whatever moves me.

Laura Hudson Mackay is a professional photographic Artist living in Dumfries and Galloway. Laura completed an Advanced Diploma in Illustrative Photography at Glasgow Metropolitan College in 2006 and a Diploma with Distinction in Art History at London Art College in 2013. Laura is an Associate Member of the Royal Photographic Society.

Both film and digital cameras are used and Laura explores concepts including Thresholds and Thin Places, doorways into other worlds; portals, ancient buildings or natural forms, particularly stone and wood. Still life subjects include organic forms such as flowers, feathers; found objects, employing an ever-growing library of photographic textures to create otherworldly images, which enchant and mystify.

While at home during the pandemic Lockdown in Spring 2020, Laura began spending time in her home studio, adventuring into the colourful land of food and product photography under the name ‘Lolliography’. There has proven to be significant demand for this high quality work which has lead to a growing client base and resulted in the setting up of a photographic studio, here at Shambellie House!

Laura has hosted photographic walking tours in The Marrakech Medina, Morocco to both groups and individuals. She has also given demonstrations in Still Life photography in her Spring Fling Open Studio events.