Please welcome to the Fastroc website a very special guest and an amazing young talent with, in our opinion, a great future ahead of her. We are honoured to present Louise Cooling. We caught up with Louise in the North East of England recently where she is currently studying Fine Art and Photography. Click here to view Louise's Galleries and Video clip

• FR:    Your images are much more then just photographs, what are you trying to say with them?
• LC       Well primarily I’m working to a brief, we have to jump through a lot of hoops for A-level, proving that art & design can have an academic side. I usually answer the briefs very literally but sometimes the results can be quite esoteric. For example, for the ‘viewpoints’ series, I was photographing the model standing on a stool with me crouched on the floor with a zoom lens getting right up in her face…which was 6ft up in the air…or I was standing over her while she was lying on the floor looking back at me. It was literally an unusual viewpoint, but the final images are somehow more than that, to me they’re almost an exploration of light and dark and shape. I used very focused directional lighting for the shoot and printed in a precise, technical way so the images are very contrasting. Consequently in some of the prints you see only part of a face, an eye or just a profile and the rest of the image is just shapes, just patches of light and shadow around the contours of a face. I’m really pleased with those images…and they helped get me an A!        
• FR:      What period influences you most?
• LC       I wouldn't say I was really inspired by a period, that’s sort of an issue with photography; there aren't easily defined periods or movements like there are in art because it’s a relatively new phenomenon and it’s constantly evolving with everyone doing different things. Much of the inspiration for my work comes from individual photographers or artists, for example the set of 3 wrapped objects photographed in monochrome were inspired by the work of a fantastic installation artist called Christo who wraps everything from buildings to pop bottles & then exhibits them as environmental installation. Also, a lot of my work comes from experimentation, I have a brilliant photography lecturer who really encourages us to ‘play’ and try new techniques, the series that I’m currently calling ‘Light trails’ came about because I wanted to look at the ‘Beneath the surface’ brief in a different way; I think it work to a degree, they remind me of X-rays. I suppose if I had to pick a favourite photographer I would say Rankin, he’s an incredible contemporary photographer, he can make even the most bland portrait seem really fresh and dynamic, I love his work
• FR:     You use a lot of monochrome in your images, Do you prefer Black & White to Colour and if so why?
• LC:      Well I started using monochrome because that’s what’s readily available to me, we don’t have a colour darkroom at college, but I would probably work in black and white even if we did. I think colour photography can look fantastic and its great for digital work but it can sometimes look really flat and you don’t always achieve that fantastic contrast of light and tone that you get with monochrome…I think black and white images are timeless and can somehow say more because you’re eyes aren’t distracted by the colours…so you sort of…look deeper.
• FR:     Where are you headed and what are you looking to achieve in the future?
• LC:      In relation to photography I’m not sure, I am hoping to study Art History at university next year so I won’t be producing photographs for a subject anymore, but I can’t see it disappearing out of my life. You could say I fell into photography at college, I always loved art but I’d never really taken anything more than holiday snaps until a year ago, however I’ve discovered a passion for photography, it’s a moment in time but what comes after…the printing…is a skill and can be very technical, but I don’t think you can produce really fantastic prints if your not just a bit artistic. That’s what I love, when it all comes together and you get a great image. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving that so photography is definitely going to be in my life one way or another!