Ever wonder what your QCG members look like in their home environment? In our ongoing series of chats with our members, this week we talk to Suzanne Mulligan. In this story Suzanne shares with us her not only her photographic interests but also her other passions. Read to the end for a tiny window into Suzanne’s daily routine and the touching ‘crossing the bridge’ reference that will leave you with a little lump in your throat.
What gear do you shoot with? My camera is an Olympus Stylus 1s which is an ideal camera for almost any situation, especially for travelling. It’s compact with its 28-300 zoom. I use an Olympus Electronic Flash FL-36R for indoor people shots. I received my first camera as a birthday present when I was 10 years old. It was a little black plastic camera which used 127 film equipped only with a shutter and a winder. I loved taking the photos and it was so exciting when Mum brought the packet of photos home from the chemist. What a joy to see those photos! I then became the “family photographer” and it’s so good to look back on many of those “primitive” photos as a window to the past. My first 35 mm camera was an Olympus OM-10, bought in the 1970s. It was so exciting because I could use colour film. Gradually I added a collection of Tamron lenses, filters, and flash, all this fitting inside a huge camera bag – remember those!! Twenty years on and did some travel in New Zealand with a compact Olympus so I didn’t need all those lenses. In the late 1990s we went on a cruise in the Whitsundays and there was an American gentleman travelling with his wife and a teddy bear. He had a digital camera and his daughter, a teacher, had asked him to photograph Teddy in front of any interesting sights and email the photos back to her so she could show her pupils. How awesome was that! A few years later I bought my first digital camera and the revolution in photography began. Two cameras later I now have the Stylus 1s. Since my OM-10, I stuck with Olympus.
Preferred genre/style of photography. I don’t really have one preference. I do enjoy taking candid photos of people if I can get them in a good pose when their face is looking natural, not forced. I have my camera on “silent” so subjects can be unaware they’ve been taken. I also like to get people with a “real” smile when they know I’m taking it. I like taking good travel photographs to remember the places I’ve seen. I don’t do “still life” and I admire the work of those who can do this well such as Tony FitzGerald’s “Balanced Diet”.
Tony FitzGerald’s ‘Balanced Diet’
Best holiday you ever had. I’ve enjoyed many wonderful holidays. Terry and I explored the North and South Islands of New Zealand in the 1990s. In 2006 we drove down to Adelaide via Broken Hill then caught the Ghan to Alice Springs. We joined a 4WD tour of all the iconic places around there including Uluru then back on the Ghan to Darwin and drove to Kakadu. This is such a beautiful part of Australia. We went to Europe for the first time in 2008 where I met my cousins in Germany and Poland in person for the first time. I also met the last of my father’s 10 siblings. We travelled by train for the first couple of weeks of our holiday. We experienced the beauty of Switzerland with its snow-capped peaks. We saw Prague with its beauty and history. We caught the train to Gdansk, Poland where the ticket collector had to find an English speaker to tell us we were in the wrong carriage as the train was due to split. We met my Polish cousin in Gdansk and we were overwhelmed by her hospitality. She showed us around Gdansk and took me to the small town where my father was born. We visited the cemetery where my grandparents and many aunts and uncles were buried in beautiful well-kept graves. We got the train to Berlin and then to Amsterdam to board the River Duchess to cruise down the Rhine and the Danube rivers. This was a beautiful way to see so much of Europe. As the boat cruised further east, we could see a stark contrast with the places we had seen in the first half of our trip. These countries were at war in the previous decade and the evidence of this was everywhere. From Bucharest we flew to London where we saw as much as we could in the week we were there before flying home. I took thousands of photographs on this holiday and took many weeks to sort through and file them. Unfortunately, within days of our return home I realised that there was something wrong with my body. However, it was three months before I was diagnosed with Transverse Myelitis, which left me an incomplete paraplegic.
I thought my travelling days were over but one of my oral history interviewees who was also a friend persuaded me that we could still travel. This was Peter Marsh, a Paralympian who taught me – you just have to plan it well. So our next overseas holiday was to Italy where Terry coached a men’s eight crew at the International Masters Rowing Regatta. I took my sister, Sharney, a nurse as an additional carer. It was a fabulous holiday around northern Italy. Since then we’ve travelled to Canada and Alaska, also the Kimberley coast and the rest of the West Australian coast.
This photo of me with the bear was an international competition which had all these bears painted by an artist from their country. Ken Done did the Australian one.
Favourite song “Beautiful Day” by U2. Love going to U2 concerts. I enjoy most musical genres including rock ‘n roll, classical, and musical theatre. I love listening to Pavarotti, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Borodin.
U2 - photo by Suzanne Mulligan
Other hobbies: I belong to two book clubs. One is a Crime & Mystery Book Club which meets at the Library on the first Wednesday of the month. Sadly that has been suspended. My favourite crime authors – Ruth Rendell, Henning Mankel, Christian White, Chris Hammer, Michael Connelly, and Michael Robotham. My other Book Club meets on the first Monday of the month, also suspended. We take turns hosting our Book Club when we each buy $150.00 worth of books to add to the boxes of books and remove the books bought the previous year. This Book Club has been great for opening up our reading to new authors because at each meeting we report on the books we’ve read in the previous month and if we like the sound of a book, we can then take it to read ourselves. My favourite book last year was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
I do enjoy photography. I take photographs but I am not a photographer. I also play the violin but I’m not a violinist. However, I am an oral historian. I’ve been an oral historian for more than 20 years since I graduated from University of Queensland majoring in Journalism and then doing an oral history workshop. I’ve enjoyed meeting some really wonderful “ordinary” people who have done extraordinary things. You can find my collection at https://mulliganoralhistory.info/ It’s been a privilege to collect their stories. Most of my collection can also be accessed at the State Library of Queensland. I’m interested in how people used to do things. One of my interviewees is Bill Smit who told me about the birth of Queensland Camera Group.
Favourite image by another QCG member: In 2007 I participated in a competition organised by the Centenary Suburbs Historical Society www.cshsoc.org.au of which I’m a member. QCG members and others were asked to take photos of nominated historical sites and they were then judged by an independent person. I was surprised to win an award in a couple of the categories and then I was invited to join QCG. I am in awe of the top photographers in QCG since I joined the club, particularly Gaye Edwards, Phil Lawrence, Max Biddlestone (love his travel photos and AVs), and Ross Miles. My favourite photo is Gaye Edwards’ photo of Sarah “Patience Perfected”.
2019 Print of the Year, ‘Patience Perfected’ by Gaye Edwards
The photo I’m most proud of is “Harmony”. This is a photo of my violin teacher at the time.
Harmony by Suanne Mulligan
I used to attend QCG meetings regularly for some years after I joined thanks to David Bullock who drove me to the meetings. Now I attend occasionally. It’s a very welcoming club with everyone willing to share their images and how they created them. We all learn from each other. I’ll look forward to when we’ve all “crossed the bridge” and we can get together again at Bardon.
Suzanne at home: I did my exercise on my MOTOmed, practised my violin and spent some time on the computer. I’ve been working on the transcript of an interview I did last year during our holiday in WA. Terry and I were in Carnarvon on 20 July which was the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Then an elderly walked in wearing a NASA jacket. My eyes lit up and he was caught. I usually take my small MP3 recorder when we go on holidays – just in case. The sound quality is not ideal but it gets the story. So I arranged to meet him when we were staying in Perth later that week. He was an engineer at the Tracking Station at Carnarvon during the moon landing. They were having a reunion at the space museum on the outskirts of Carnarvon. We had a look at it on our way out of town and it is definitely worth seeing. Anyway, that’s what I’m working on at the moment.