Writing
& Notes
Occasional notes from the studio and the road — on looking, on film, and on the slow business of making pictures. Updated rarely, and on purpose.
On waiting for the light to fail
Most of my favourite frames were made in the last eleven minutes of usable daylight, when the world stops cooperating and starts, briefly, to confess. The trick is to be there before it does — and then to do nothing at all until it happens.
Why I still print contact sheets
A contact sheet is a record of how someone thought. It shows the frames you nearly made, the ones you made twice, and the long dull middle where nothing happened. I print every roll, in ink, before I look at it on a screen.
The cost of a clean negative
Editing is mostly subtraction, and subtraction is mostly grief. A clean negative — one frame, no safety net — costs you the comfort of the alternative. It also, mercifully, costs you the alternative.
Notes from a frozen river
Twelve mornings, twelve frames, the same stretch of Hokkaido coast. The light barely moved. What changed was me: by the eighth day I had stopped looking for pictures and started looking at the water, which is, I think, the whole point.
Against the mood board
A mood board is a confession that you do not yet trust your own eye. I am not against references; I am against the moment the reference becomes the brief. Go to the place. Let the place argue back.
A small case for prime lenses
A zoom lens asks the world to come to you. A prime lens asks you to go to the world — on foot — and to decide, with your legs, how close is close enough. I have made every photograph I care about with a single 50mm.