Street
Blue Hour, One Car
A forest road, an old car and a sky that had been going blue for twenty minutes. The headlights do most of the work; the trees do the rest. I parked a hundred metres back and waited for the light…
Field notes
A year with one lens, and what it taught me about distance
Twelve months ago I put every lens but one in a drawer. This is a note on what a single 35 mm did to the way I look, why the drawer is still shut, and what I would say to…
Black and White
Smoke, Slowly
Smoke is the most patient subject I know and the least cooperative. It goes where the air in the room goes, and the air in the room goes where you breathe. So I stopped breathing, for a second at a…
Nature
Four, Going South
Four birds against a sky the colour of paper, photographed from a field at the end of the season. There were hundreds; the frame is the four that happened to line up. The exposure sits two stops over what the…
Nature
The Nest
A blue bird, a nest the size of an egg cup and three mornings in a hide at the bottom of the garden. The picture is the one where it looked at the nest instead of at me. Long lens,…
Black and White
The Band, 1911
Twenty musicians, their instruments and one dog, arranged by a photographer who knew exactly where every face should go. The print cost less than a coffee and has been on my desk since. Nobody at the market knew who they…
Nature
Late Edition
Long exposures, a cold tripod and the one cloud that refused to leave. I kept it. Without the cloud the moon has nothing to hang on. Astrophotographers would have waited for the cloud to pass. I am not one, and…
Travel
The Opening
A cave on the coast with one hole in the roof, and the twenty minutes a day when the sun comes through it. I lay on the sand at the bottom and photographed the sky. The picture is the shape…
Winter
First Cast
A lake in February, a fisherman who has been there since five and mist that took the far shore away. The photographs are almost grey on purpose. The exposure sits a stop over what the meter wants. Mist is white;…
Stay in the frame
New work, field notes and the occasional dispatch from wherever the light is good.