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Dr Doug opens the FOTO FRENZY Photographic Centre in Brisbane

The much awaited reopening of the expanded FOTO FRENZY Photographic Centre in Coorparoo took place on Friday, January 18, 2013. Attended by a crowd of around 100 well-wishers the event heralded a new beginning for dilettantes of a wide range of photography interests including:

• photography workshops
• photographic gallery
• fine art printing, mounting and framing
• photographic darkroom hire
• studio hire
• one-on-one consultations

Mark photographs the Foto Frenzy Team PHOTO: Victoria Cooper

The FOTO FRENZY space is shared with BRISBANE CAMERA HIRE, specialist in providing a range of photographic gear and unusual accessories.

The Foto Frenzy team includes Brisbane photo identities Ian Poole, Cam Attree, Tony Holden and Darren Jew. All four are photographers and have specialist areas of activity from photography as art, to location and underwater photography, nude and glamour photography and photography as personal expression. Darren Jew is well known in photo workshop circles for the ‘Faces and Places’ workshop that he established with Jim McKitrick in the late 1980s.

The team l-r Darren Jew, Tony Holden, Cam Attreee, Ian Poole and Susan BCH PHOTO: Victoria Cooper

The Foto Frenzy team have been together for twelve months in a modest facility just a short distance away from the new home. Now with the larger facility and the linkup with Susan & Jacob and Brisbane Camera Hire new and amazing opportunities for the business and the clients that they service are available.

Doug Spowart opens Foto Frenzy PHOTO: Victoria Cooper

As someone with a history in photography that connects with most of the Foto Frenzy team, as well as being a former Director of the photo gallery and workshop—Imagery Gallery, (that operated in Brisbane from 1980-1995), I was asked to open the new Foto Frenzy Photographic Centre. Some of my comments in the opening speech were…

 The other day I was made aware of a TIME magazine article in which the claim was made that 10% of all the photographs ever made in the over 170 year history of photography were made in 2012!! This statement is evidence that with digital photography, including the now ubiquitous mobile phone, means that anyone can take photographs—But does that mean that everyone IS a photographer? My opinion is no—Because there is something special in the blood of the photographer that enables them, or demands of them, that just seeing and snapping isn’t enough.

True photographers want to ‘craft’ and create images that are about significant visual communication. Sometimes powerful, sometimes sublime, sometimes nonsensical or humorous and sometimes, perhaps even bland and boring. We know of these kinds of photographs because they tell us about beauty in the world, of atrocity, of feast, famine and of love and the human condition. These images inspire us and drive us, perhaps even spur us on to be better photographers ourselves—and this is where we encounter the need for networking, training, nurturing support, guidance and technology support. This is where the Foto Frenzy suite of services will link with our lives.

I congratulate the Foto Frenzy team and Brisbane Camera Hire for their vision, entrepreneurship and financial commitment in establishing this photographic centre. And what I see are the great opportunities for those of us interested in being a part of what photography is, and where it is going—to have a place that will be a hub, or should I say, a frenzied hive of activity.

It is with great pleasure that I declare the Foto Frenzy centre open…. 

Ian Poole in his thank you advised the attendees that Cooper and Spowart were to be, in a couple of months, the Foto Frenzy’s first Artists in Residence.

SPECIAL NOTE: We will be conducting a range of workshops @ Foto Frenzy over the following months. The topics of our workshops and consultations will include aspects of our PhD research into photobooks, creative photography practice, narrative and story telling in the photo sequence and aspects of social media, in particular Linkedin, Blogs and YouTube. We will also be available for one-on-one project/concept development.

To let us know you would like to be advised of the workshops when they become available  

Contact us <Greatdivide@a1.com.au>

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Foto Frenzy @ Corparoo, cnr Old Cleveland & Bennets Rds PHOTO: Doug Spowart

The Foto Frenzy Gallery PHOTO: Victoria Cooper

Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper in the Foto Frenzy Photobooth

Foto Frenzy opening shadows PHOTO: Doug Spowart

Cheers Doug and Victoria