I’ve been looking back on some pieces of writing I did back in the summer and exploring the whole process of writing along side making. Writing about my thought process while making is quite new for me. I guess I’ve been not giving enough importance to documenting the internal creative process aswell much as my studio work.
Until I started writing down my thoughts about 6 months ago, it was easy to lose track of many different experiments and themes emerging. Writing things down- or as I call it- trapping ideas in between pages of a book- has meant I’ve been able to take a broader view of my overall practice, take stock and think about where I want to move next.
This bit of writing began as a voice note while I was taking photographs. Voice notes are great because they quickly capture things in the moment.
I’d just picked an apothecary rose that morning. I brought it inside, out of the wind, and placed it in a small bottle of water. The bottle happened to be an old honey jar.
I started taking photos, but I wasn’t connecting with them. Something felt off. Harris, my three-year-old, was nearby, climbing over things and picking up camera lenses. I was trying to stay present but also move with the moment.
I got rid of the water in the bottle. But what next? I remembered I had some honey from my bees in the next room, so I poured that in instead. And something changed.
I stopped being interested in the rose. I became completely absorbed in the way the sunlight hit the honey through the glass – how it reflected onto the wax paper I’d laid underneath. The light shifted constantly. I had to respond quickly. No overthinking. Just catch it or lose it.
I found some bamboo silk ribbon I’d dyed and dropped it into the honey. It caught the light too. Eventually I pulled it partway out and started photographing the honey sliding across the silk. It was beautiful – the colour, the texture, the unpredictability of it all.
At one point, Harris picked up one of my camera lenses and held it to his eye.
He said – “Why have you got little windows?”
And I just stopped.
Because that question felt profound.
It reminded me that photography isn’t really about the outer image. Not for me.
It’s about the inner dialogue I’m having as I take the photograph.
There’s this quiet searching happening in me when I’m working – and when something I see in the world suddenly expresses what I feel inside, that’s the moment I press the shutter. That’s the moment of clarity. Sometimes it’s in focus. Sometimes not. Doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the image holds something true.
What matters is that it says something I couldn’t find words for.
And Harris was right – the lens is like a little window. But the camera itself is a vessel. A home for my inner world. It receives my thoughts through my hands – through buttons and focus rings and shifting light – and somehow translates them into something you can see.
That’s the magic of it.
The image might show a flower or some ribbon or a bottle of honey – but if I’m lucky, what it’s really showing you is my experience of looking through the camera lens.
The stillness. The awe. The sense that something ordinary just caught fire for a moment in the sunlight.
And if you see it – really see it , then maybe I’ve managed to show you something that words can’t- through a little window.
Leave a Reply