Aspects of Absorption

The camera helps me slow down and explore what’s happening at the heart of things. I rarely set out with a particular view in mind, preferring to follow wherever curiosity leads.

I enjoy the opportunity photography gives to isolate elements of a scene and explore them in depth. Whether or not this study of particular elements leads to a “picture” is less important than the way it helps me sink into my feeling for a place.

I’m particularly attracted to what happens on the surface of things: light and shadow play, reflections on water, marks left by tendrils, fungi, algae or the remains of roots on stone. I’m fascinated by the ways in which time and the elements work together in haphazard, co-incidental ways, forming, deforming and reforming.

The delight for me is in recording as closely as possible what nature creates: the organic abstract designs which are just there to be discovered, and which would otherwise be overlooked.

The closer I get, the more I see. The material is everywhere, but among my favourite places to photograph are boatyards, graveyards, ancient monuments, abandoned outbuildings and ruins. For all their differences, these organic abstracts are really all pictures of the same thing. They are studies in metamorphosis; aspects of absorption.