Quiet Moments, Strong Feelings: The Work of Trevor Melville

My name is Trevor Melville, I am a non-professional photographer from Victoria, BC, Canada. I remember getting my first camera as a child, as it was a disposable single-use camera my parents bought for me when we were on vacation. Although the photos were of poor quality, it was still inspiring enough for me to want to do more.

I used photography initially as a way to document my travels and family events, but eventually I discovered that photographs had the power to tell stories and evoke emotions, which is what I try to achieve today.

For some time now, I have been fascinated with black and white photography. I love the graphic qualities and the challenges in getting the best images using light and shadow, lines and shapes.

In my B&W portrait work "Metis Woman Learning to Play The Fiddle", I had been in a conversation with the subject long before taking her portrait. At that time, she was just learning to play a fiddle her late father had made when she was a child.

Hearing her story and seeing how emotional this was for her, I was inspired to create a portrait that conveyed that sentiment. Winning this award inspires and energises me to keep creating, and it's an honour to be included with such a talented group of photographers.

I take a considerable amount of time to reflect on a select number of my recent images that I think best reflect my work and favourite genres. I also need to be satisfied that the images are technically excellent and that exposure, focusing and composition are as flawless as I can make them. I try to be a harsh critic of my own work and show only my very best images.

I love the combination of art and the science/technical side of creating images. I started photography in the days of analogue, where you didn't get to see the final images until they came back from the developer, usually a week or so later.

It was always an exciting moment to open the pack of photos and see the results. The best images were always inspiring, and the not-so-good ones were for learning and improving.

I have several favourite genres, including landscape and all types involving people and human activity. Landscapes to remind me of the incredible beauty of nature, and as a curious observer, nothing is more interesting to me than people, the things they create, and often just the day-to-day living everybody does. Every person has a story to tell.

I recently switched to mirrorless digital cameras. Since I have always been in the Nikon family, starting with my first camera, I now have Nikon Z7ii and Z6ii bodies with several Z mount lenses. I have also kept some of my speciality F mount lenses, which I can still use on the Z mount with an adapter.

I love the lighter weight bodies, the higher resolution of the Z7ii, and since I now shoot almost exclusively in manual mode with live view, the large rear screens are excellent to see how the images will turn out.

I am most satisfied with the images I have created when they can engage and speak to the viewer. I often want to convey strong emotions such as happiness, sadness, loneliness, and the one thing is mostly peacefulness.

The woman in my B&W portrait image, "Metis Woman Learning to Play the Fiddle", was truly a pleasure to work with. I had a certain look I wanted to create, but she was free to position herself as she wanted to be seen in the portrait. The challenging part was to get the lighting just right using a two-light studio set-up. I spent quite a bit of time pre-planning this one.

My second Image, "Skywalk", was taken at the top of an open structure that's about 30 meters tall. I had spent a few hours photographing this fascinating place and near the end of my time there I took this shot looking down the centre, it wasn't until later that I realised I had captured one person in the image walking up the spiral ramp which gave the image exactly what it needed giving it a sense of scale and purpose.

Sometimes it's just being at the right place at the right time!

I try to find inspiration in as many places as I can. Where I live gets a fair number of rainy days over the winter months, and normally I'm not that motivated to shoot in the rain, but last winter I made a special effort to get out shooting even when the weather didn't seem conducive to good photography. Happily, I was rewarded with some really good "moody" images, especially on the foggy days.

In the cinema, I have always loved watching movies in the Film-Noir genre. Shot in black and white, the best ones made careful use of light and shadow. I often shoot in B&W, and I try to use some of the same lighting techniques as well as simplicity in my images.

I've always remembered a bit of advice I was given by a well known photographer many years ago, I've updated it a bit but he said that: photographs are meant to be seen, don't keep them hidden in a shoebox or on a hard drive or in the cloud where nobody sees them. Get your best images out there to be seen, and I know from experience that photography awards are one of the best ways of doing that.

To excel in photography awards, pay close attention to the requirements for submission and follow them, review photos from past years of award winners to see what makes a winning image. It's also helpful to understand what genres/categories your images are best suited for and only submit your very best work.

Take photos. Take a lot of photos. Most won't be award winners, of course, but there is so much to learn, which is one of the great things about photography. You'll learn best by getting out there shooting and having fun, and it doesn't matter if you're taking photos with a cell phone or a high-end digital camera.

I am most satisfied with my images when there is almost nothing to adjust in post-processing. I'll often do some cropping and slight colour adjustments, but I'm always trying to "get it right in the camera". I do, however, enjoy post-processing as the creative opportunities are immense, it's fun creating art, and occasionally I will pick an image and just play with it to see what comes out.

The use of AI will only continue to grow in photography, but as with most things, there can be good and bad in it. At present, it's a very useful tool in post-processing as adding or subtracting objects and speeding up the processing time.

My approach is that anything beyond careful enhancement of an image moves it into a different category. I'm seeing ever larger numbers of images that have been altered with AI, which is concerning when the viewer is unaware that it's made that way and is shown as a subject meant to depict something truthful and real.

The viewer needs to be informed if the image has been altered, and I'm happy to see that many photography awards have added a separate category where AI has been used to either generate an image or alter it substantially from the original work.

I would like to travel to Greece and other countries around the Mediterranean again. I had travelled there a few years ago but didn't have the time or equipment to photograph it the way I would like to now.