Next up in our interview series is Karen Riley:

please introduce yourself: Hi, I’m Karen.

what is “your style” of photography? My preferred style is to carry a camera with me all the time and take pictures of things that catch my eye.

how long have you been shooting film? what do you get out of it? I started with my parents’ Kodak Instamatic and Voigtländer when I was little. Two months after I got a DSLR in 2007 I took it to a party and broke it, and while it was away being repaired, I became more obsessed with photography and got back into film. I like how film makes me think more about each shot and take fewer pointless photos of nothing than I do with digital, and I like how film often looks much nicer than digital, but I kind of think this is a blessing and a curse because you can get lured into relying on film and other aids to add interest to shots, and I like the challenge of trying to create decent photos without having too much in them to disguise the effect of my own choice of subject matter and composition.

with regard to the above photo, tell us about it. how did you take it and what did you take it with? I took this with a waterproof Fuji disposable camera. It was on a record hot day in summer and a cold front was rolling in so the light was beautiful and stormy and the waves were higher than usual in the bay. We didn’t know at the time obviously but it turned out this was Black Saturday. I spent most of my time having to dive under waves and brush water out of my eyes and off the camera casing and so on, but in between I was trying to time my shots as people dived through the waves with the sun catching them. Most of the shots on the roll were very under or overexposed or were taken a moment too late as a wave got me but there were a few where I liked the exposure and composition and this was the best. I cropped it on two sides to adjust the surf-affected framing.

why did you pick this shot out of the three? I think it’s memorable because it has so many different things going for it. I like the composition, I love the light and the breaking water and the way she’s leaping up and looking into that light like in some classical painting, and I like how you feel such a sense of movement and it makes you wonder did she jump or did the surf lift her up or a bit of both, and you can tell I’m about to get dunked by that wave and then you also think hmm, what’s a camera doing there.

what were you aiming to achieve with it? It was a friend’s birthday so I wanted some photos to remember the day, and I had been wanting to try some shots in the sea since seeing some of krameroneill’s shots like this. Sadly now the photo is also a reminder of the fires, and of the cold front that changed the wind direction and made the fires worse.

how would you take it / arrange it differently if you had the chance? I wouldn’t change much but I would like it if the highlights were less noisy. A better scan might improve it.

do you prefer colour or black & white? do you have a favourite film? a favourite camera? I prefer colour because I love colours and again I think it’s more of a challenge than black & white. I love black & white too though. My favourite films change but today they are Kodak Portra 400VC, Fuji Reala 100, and Kodak Ektar 100. I like Fuji Superia 400 for everyday 35mm use. My favourite camera is my Hasselblad 500CM with 80mm f/2.8 lens, I love the look of the photos it produces and I also love composing in the square viewfinder. It’s also easy and very nice to use although I’m very slow with it and I wish it was lighter. I did have a Lomo LC-A+ that was a potential favourite camera for a while too because in many ways I liked the results it gave, and it was so light and portable and quick to use, but I really went off the distortion it produced so I’m looking for a replacement ultra-portable camera now.

what do you like to see in other people’s photos in the MSM pool? I like photos that are memorable and have more going for them than bokeh balls or some nice light falling on nothing in particular. They might evoke some sort of mood, they might raise some questions or be funny or geometrically appealing, but they should have at least two or three elements working for them and if there’s a foreground and background the background should add something too.

I love this one, it’s elegant and funny with the cat formally posed, looking at once cute and murderous, and with the bedding and hanging clothes looking soft and lovely out of focus but remaining sufficiently in focus to provide an environmental context for the cat. The use of b&w also lends a classic formal look to it, which you would normally associate more with someone’s great-grandparents than with a cat, but this very dignified cat pulls it off.

do you have a question you’d like to see the next interviewee answer? What advice would you give to someone wanting to take better photos?

Great, thanks for your time, Karen!

You can find Karen on flickr as supacrush and will be able to see her work on display as part of the UNSENSORED09 exhibition in August.