On my love of light

Light, for me, is as important as air, water and food. My raison d’être.

People have said that I am a ‘lover of light’, but the depth of that connection, to just be with light, to sense it and anticipate it, is both my intense passion and the foundations of my purpose as a photographer.

First light, last light, intense light, flat light, moody spotlights bursting through stormy skies, available light, artificial light, directional light, bouncing light, natural light, fill light, bending light, lines painted by shadows.

Light is refracted as it enters the lens on it’s journey to the camera. Concentrating this refraction will start a fire and bring warmth and burning light.

Visible light. The full electromagnetic spectrum, giver of colour, painter of colourful rainbows. Sunrises, sunsets, noctilucent and nacreous clouds glow as light highlights them.

Reflected light from objects and mirrors, part of how a dSLR camera works.

Invisible light. Ultraviolet & infrared. Fluorescence and bioluminescence.

Metaphorical light that humans beam.

Divine light, spiritually honoured and culturally held.

Ancient light arriving in the darkness of night, with stars studding the sky.

Universal light, our Milky Way as we see it now, is in a moment, as it was light years ago.

The biggest star of all, our sun. It’s energy is light. Plasma and geomagnetic energy excite gas particles in our atmosphere, release photons of light and we see them collectively dance together aurora borealis.

It is magnetic and magical.

I am in awe of light and its energy.

Light is a wave, we feel folk and dig those on our wavelength or frequency. Science and the senses connecting. It is the human condition.

The light year.

Summer and winter solstice.

Spring and autumn equinox.

I see it, sense it, tune into how it tracks across the sky over a day and how it moves as our seasons unfold and share different qualities of light as we complete the annual rotation round the sun.

What I adore most about it is the beauty in the profound moment that the shutter clicks, is literally capturing light, painting it on the sensor and distilling it.

A culmination of fleeting micro decisions to interpret the visible and invisible.

The lens choice, composition, the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, the connection to the emotion with the person or scene in front of me.

My ‘why’ is forever entwined with these elements, mindfully weaving in the narrative, seasoned with creativity, it is my raison d’être