Morpeth Camera Club members enjoy their annual 'Big Event'

Kathryn is an international award-winning photographer, who combines the Seeing Eye with her Photoshop skills to create stunning fantasy images full of emotion with strong narratives.

Kathryn opened the evening with a short history of how she got into photography, the photographers she met along the way and her introduction into the digital world. So determined was she to master Photoshop that after a few weeks she had produced her own composite pictures of characters placed in unusual or unlikely settings.

She then went on to develop her own post-processing techniques including the use of blending modes, layer masks and bas-relief effects. Entering competitions, watching photographic judges and presenting her work in exhibitions, she said, had all contributed to her success in photography.

Amusing anecdotes of trips to Scotland in winter were illustrated with glowing hoar-frosted trees and sweeping snowy landscapes and were followed by useful suggestions on how to achieve mood and atmosphere into one's work. Her brilliant use of light was evident in her Lake District lake reflections, autumnal forests, bluebell woods and silver birch trees.

When the weather is really bad one can always turn to still life, she said, and went on to show examples of delicate fading flowers and graphic images of hats and shoes.

After a short interval Kathryn showed the audience images for which she is better known and for which she has been awarded medals. This is work over which she had ultimate control, in finding backgrounds to suit her subject such as an old railway carriage with a soldier returning from war, spectators impossibly close to massive waves, and a First World War nurse in the middle of moorland; all images with a story to tell. These composite images are always connected in some way, usually by a colour which recurs within the scene.