Introducing Susanna Andersson of the McLean Photo Club

Susanna Andersson is a photographer of great abstracts. It was at the McLean Photo Club that the abstracts came into focus.

Susanna joined the club this year. Unlike many fellow members, she is newly serious about photography. Originally a copywriter in her native Finland, and now the mother of three young children, Susanna always used a point-and-shoot camera.

“A few years ago, for some strange reason my husband bought a digital SLR. He’s a gadget person. But then I needed to learn how it works, because it felt silly to have it on Auto all the time.”

Susanna took the initiative to get some basic photography training in Houston where her family lived at the time. But it wasn’t until they moved to McLean, and she took a DSLR workshop with Okello Dunkley in Arlington, that things began to click. The class made sense of the controls; the pictures became interesting.

“And Okello said also, ‘Buy a 50 millimeter lens.”

With the old-fashioned 50mm, which is a normal perspective, fixed focal length lens, Susanna’s photography took off. You might ask, Why?

The downside of the medium zoom lens that comes with new DSLRs is that it reinforces the instinct, upon choosing a subject, immediately to stop and shoot. A fixed lens, like a 50mm, doesn’t always allow you to quickly stop and shoot. If, upon looking through the view finder, your subject is too close or too far, you need to move.

That is actually an advantage for serious photography. Moving around compels the photographer to examine all of what’s in the viewfinder, and to compose the picture with more care. Once you start moving and re-composing, instead of just zooming tight or wide, your pictures get better.

In addition, a fixed focal length lens is usually optically sharper and “faster” than a zoom. The largest aperture or opening of the fixed lens is wider, admitting more light and allowing a higher shutter speed, and blurring the background better than a zoom.

“So then I just suddenly knew what I was doing. I was able to switch to Manual. That was

fun. Once you learn manual exposure, it always works the way you tell it to work. It’s amazing.”

I asked Susanna about her preferred subjects. Until recently, she could not have answered.

“Last October at the McLean Photo Club we had a group critique. Before that, I didn’t actually realize what I was shooting. I just was shooting random things that interested me. I finally put my images up in that blind critique group, because it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as a competition. Every time one of my pictures came up randomly on the screen, somebody said, ‘This is an abstract.’”

It was news to Susanna. Her visual radar had been operating one step ahead of her knowledge of photography.

“Afterward, when I looked at my images, they are all lines and patterns, so obviously I’m seeking that.”

Now, when Susanna puts a cabbage on the kitchen table and takes pictures of it, intermittently over the course of a day as she did over the holidays, she knows how to name what she is creating.

“In January, we had Tuan Pham speaking at MPC. One of the things Tuan said was that Zen finds beauty and meaning in the ordinary. I found it very interesting. That’s what I’m trying to do. Macro worlds fascinate me.”

I asked Susanna to name her influences in photography. Her first answer was her eight-year-old daughter.

“She just goes around our house and finds these interesting corners to photograph.“

Susanna is a fan of Mike Moats, a macro photography aficionado, and one of a growing number of teaching professionals who publishes a great image daily on his social media pages. DC-based Douglas Sonders is another favorite.

“He does the coolest car photography ever!”

Last but not least, Susanna credits local instructor Bill Folsom with urging her to join a camera club.

“The two best pieces of advice I ever got were 1) buy a 50mm lens and 2) join a camera club.”

Susanna is also thankful to MPC members Tom Mangan and Sue Teunis for encouraging her this past fall to enter images in the Nature Visions Photo Expo competition and to Bill Corbett for making sure the matting for her prints was correct. One of Susanna’s images was selected among the fifty best. That image is now part of a traveling exhibit that is on display in Reston until February 22 and it is in the gallery above.

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An archive of our illustrated Patch posts on club competitions, and of interviews with club members Bill Prosser, Tom Mangan, Ursy Potter, Margaret Huddy, David Stossel, Minnie Gallman, Linda Toki and Gloria Freund, is at the McLean Photo Club's new Facebook page.  Please "LIKE" us on Facebook to keep up with the interview series and announcements from the club. And please “SHARE” on your Facebook page anything you like from the MPC page. That helps us attract new members from among your

Facebook friends.

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The McLean Photo Club is in its fourth decade -- and we welcome new members. Just come to the next club meeting as a guest, to see what the club’s about. MPC will meet next on Wednesday February 13 at 7:30 pm in the McLean Community Center. Our speaker will be Scott Musson, who will give his excellent presentation on digital workflow, i.e., how to process your photos on the computer for ease of organization, consistency and outstanding results. For more about Scott and his presentation, see here.