No camera? No problem
● Priscilla Fick of Mossel Bay, who has been invited to exhibit some of her photographs at a formal gallery exhibition in Johannesburg later this month, doesn’t own a camera.
The amateur photographer, who works as a full-time marketing assistant at Cape Karoo International’s Mossel Bay ostrich leather tannery, describes herself as a creative soul and a reflective misfit. And now, quite by accident, she has discovered that she is a talented photographer who has been invited to display her images at four big exhibitions around the world this year.
“I don’t know anything at all about composition or editing, I just take pictures of things that appeal to me on my phone. I only ever use things like filters if I want to change a photograph into black and white,” she said, expressing surprise at being selected to exhibit at the Art of Photography exhibition to be held in Rosebank, Johannesburg, later this month, after winning the Best of Black & White category.
Though it is not the first gallery exhibition she has been invited to be a part of, it is the first one she will attend in person and get to see how it all works.
“It all started out as a bit of a game,” Fick, 44, told the Sunday Times, explaining that she has several creative outlets such as an ad hoc column in the Mossel Bay Advertiser and a blog titled “Reflections of a Misfit”.
A friend encouraged her to upload the GuruShots app onto her Samsung A12 phone which has “a pretty nice camera” to engage more fully with photography. GuruShots is described as “the world’s greatest photography game” and is a platform for people who love taking photographs.
“I had the app for a while but this year I started playing earnestly and uploaded images every day,” Fick said.
“It’s a fun game that anyone can play, and you work yourself up to a level where you can qualify to have your pictures exhibited in magazines and then on to actual gallery exhibitions,” she said.
Photographs are voted for by other GuruShots members, and entries are not under the entrants’ names, so voting is fair. Contestants cannot wangle extra points by asking friends to vote for them or curators to select their images.
“At GuruShots, we believe that it’s not about the gear you use or the training you received.
“It’s not even really about the subjects you shoot. It’s about your talent. We built GuruShots to give people a place to show and nurture that talent,” the app’s website says.
Fick started entering photographs in specific categories and began shooting images to match category descriptions on the app. Her portfolio grew, her skills improved and she got her first major feedback in February.
She was notified that one of her pictures — of a hippo in a river — had been selected for Almanaque Fotografica in Mexico City in August under the theme “The Beauty of Earth”.
And then came: “Congratulations! Your
photo has been selected to be digitally showcased at the Ultimate Exhibition Shot at the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, US, which will run from mid-July to early September.” That was for a photograph she took on a holiday to Victoria Falls in 2019 when she got up at 3.45am one day to watch the sunrise.
“Watching the sky change from blue to pink to vibrant orange was something that I will always treasure; to be alone, hot coffee in hand to watch something so beautiful is inspirational.
“I remember thinking at the time ‘Wow, this photo should be in a gallery somewhere’. Little did I know.”
And then another one was selected for another exhibition in Limassol, Cyprus, in June. This was an aerial view of Victoria Falls.
“I would love to attend all of them, but I kind of have this full-time job that doesn’t allow for it, nor do I have unlimited money.
In fact paying the exhibition fees has already wiped out a big chunk of my savings,” Fick said.
“These costs range between R150 to R270 per winning image selected for display to cover the printing costs “which is just a few dollars, but works out to be quite a lot in rand”.
“But when I was invited to the exhibition in Joburg I figured ‘fortune favours the brave’ and I decided to put together a bit of a crowdfunder and raised enough money to get there in person,” she said. Any money raised above her travel costs will be spent on a photography course.
Her favourite things to photograph are ordinary moments and the beauty she sees around her: the ever-changing sea, flowers, leaves, stones or scenery — whatever she spots in her quest for perfect pictures.
“The other night I was housesitting for people and while I was waiting for keys I noticed the most incredible sunset,” she said.
“I am so excited and honoured and humbled by all of this. I know there are thousands and thousands of keen photographers in the world, so this is such a huge surprise. The wonderful thing about this foot in the door is that the story of little old me will reach people and hopefully inspire them to also slow down and look for beauty rather than focusing on negative stuff.”
For now, she plans to just sit back and see where her efforts take her.
Her ultimate dream is to become a blogger who gets paid to travel the world, write and take pictures.
Kyla Roux, manager of FotoZA Gallery in Rosebank Mall, said the business was GuruShots’ favourite exhibition venue in South Africa and had hosted four exhibitions for it in the past two years.
“We get very good feedback on their exhibitions because the pictures are so diverse and they are from all over the world and are not generally the things South Africans get to see every day.”
Roux, who will print and hang the images herself, said the GuruShots exhibition would encompass more than 100 images in different sizes.