Jean grew up on a farm in the Elgin district, and is now a Cape Town based amateur photographer.  Most of her childhood years were spent in beautiful natural surroundings with wide open spaces.  It was here that her love of nature was born.  Sadly, the visual arts were not encouraged in her youth, so her training was in the sciences with very little exposure to art.  It was only in 2005 that she acquired her first camera that her creative side was able to develop.  Photography became a passionate hobby.

Jean took up photography at the time when digital was becoming more popular than film.  So she never worked developing and printing film in the darkroom but has learnt all her processing techniques digitally using photoshop and related programmes.  Her training in photography was through numerous short courses in basic photography, followed by more specialised courses in landscape, macro and more recently creative fine art photography.  She has been a Cape Town photographic society member for many years and was very fortunate to be invited to join a small group of ladies who call themselves the Full Spectrum photo club.  These ladies meet once or twice a month to shoot, view and criticise each other’s images, and, more importantly, share knowledge.  They have done courses and workshops together and have held two exhibitions.  Jean’s close contact with this group of photographers has played a big part in her development as a photographer.

Jean’s love of the outdoors took her firstly into Landscape photography.  During the lockdown, when it was difficult to get out, Jean developed a more creative style in her photography.  She uses both in-camera techniques, such as intentional camera movement and multiple images, and combinations of the two, and out-of-camera techniques, such as transfers and layering. The art effect of these images is usually enhanced in post-production.  This genre of photography has captured her and most of her current work is in Creative Fine Art Photography.

She loves to travel and capture the essence of a country, whether it is in the landscape or the people of the country.