Julie Pallant
Photographer, Digital Artist, Educator and Author
Welcome
Hi I’m Julie Pallant, a photographer, digital artist, educator and author. I have an overactive brain and a love of all things creative, as you will see if you take a wander around my website. This website represents my various creative adventures over the past eight years.
Let me take you on a tour.
After initially qualifying as a Psychologist, and later as Statistician, I have spent the last 25 years working as a psychologist, researcher and university lecturer, teaching people how to conduct research. During this time I wrote an internationally best selling textbook (SPSS Survival Manual) on how to use the SPSS computer package to analyze data. This book, which is now in its 7th edition, is available from the Amazon site if you happen to be interested!
In 2017 I retired from academia and took up photography - something I had always wanted to do but had never found the time. Like most things I do, I threw myself into it passionately, experimenting with all genres of photography.
My first serious photography love was birds - so much so that I earned the nickname of “the mad bird lady” around my neighbourhood. I used the many thousands of bird photographs that I accumulated to produce a calendar each year, raising money for a local seabird rescue charity in my area.
To see more of my bird photographers click on the dropdown under the Photography tab.
I discovered the joys of Adobe Photoshop and started experimenting with my bird images, replacing the backgrounds with art work painted by professional artists. More recently I have been experimenting with using backgrounds created using the Midjourney, an AI image generator program. For more info on AI go to the AI tab.
These composite images proved to be very popular enlarged and printed onto canvas and sold as wall art at markets and galleries in my local area. You can see more of these images under the Digital Art tab.
Given that I was 57 years old when I first picked up a camera, I wanted to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could. I attended every workshop I could find, and coerced all my friends and neighbours into posing for me.
This led to a continuing passion for portrait photography.
In 2022 I enrolled in a Diploma of Photography and Photo Imaging at Torrens University (I suspect that I am one of the oldest students there!). It was a bit of a shock to going back to handing in assignments and nervously awaiting the marks being released.
The course has forced me to consider what area of photography I intend to specialize in. I have chosen the often neglected area of portraits of women over 50 years of age. I have labelled this my Fabulous Over 50’s project.
Many women in this age bracket have not had a portrait done for many years. They avoid having their photo taken as they are uncomfortable with what age has done to their appearance. They no longer recognize the woman that they see in the mirror.
It is often their family that encourage them to have some nice images taken. I make the experience as comfortable and enjoyable as I can. I think it helps that I am also ‘over 50’ and understand how they feel. I love Photoshop and get to apply all my editing skills to bring out the best in the images that I take.
If you are over 50 and feeling like it is about time that you had some nice portrait images taken, please check out my Fabulous Over 50’s page for more details.
My other passion is creating what I call “Montage of Memories” where I combine my portrait images with scanned images from my client’s collection that tell the story of their lives. These images are carefully composited into a single image which is printed and framed, forming a great legacy for future generations.
If you would like more information, or you would like me to create one of these special images for you, please go to the Photography tab and choose Montage of Memories from the dropdown list.
My latest creative adventure is into the world of artificial intelligence - amazing and scary at the same time! .
For the past two years I have been experimenting with Midjourney, a very powerful AI-image generator which produces the most incredible images, just by typing in a description of the image that you would like to produce.
Given my experience in writing textbooks, I decided to put together an easy to follow guide for people wanting to learn how to use Midjourney. The final result: Creating images with AI: A step-by-step guide to Midjourney was accepted for publication by Taylor and Francis and should be available in stores later this year. In the meantime I am putting together an ebook version that will be available for download from my website in late August.
If you would like to be notified when my book is available join my mailing list using the form on the AI book tab.
I am also intending to set up a Blog and Resources list which will keep you up to date with developments in the fast moving world of AI. Sign up to receive notifications.