I rarely arrive at a scene with a photograph already in mind.
Most of the time, I sit for a while and simply look.
My eyes move slowly across what is in front of me, not searching for anything specific, but noticing what begins to stand out. The way the light shifts across the surface of the water. The patterns that appear and disappear as the wind changes. Small differences in tone and colour that weren’t obvious at first glance.
It is often the light that draws me in.
A cloudless sky, for example, rarely holds my attention for long. But when there are clouds moving through, something begins to happen. The light breaks, softens, and returns. It creates moments—brief and easily missed—where parts of the scene become quietly defined.
Sometimes the sky itself becomes the subject. At other times, it simply reveals what was already there.
I find myself watching how quickly the clouds are moving, trying to anticipate when the light might fall in a way that changes the balance of the scene. There are moments when the light feels almost directional, as if it is being placed rather than simply present.
When I begin to frame the image, I use the compositional approaches I have learned over time. But I don’t feel bound by them. Often, I will take one photograph that follows those conventions, and then another that doesn’t. It is not always clear in the moment which one will feel right later.
What I notice at the time is not always complete.
It is quite common for me to return home and see something in the image that I hadn’t been aware of when I took it. In the photograph accompanying this entry, I didn’t notice the birds until I viewed it on a larger screen. They were always there, but not part of what I thought I was photographing.
That, to me, is part of the process.
I am drawn to simplicity. Scenes where there is very little, and yet something holds your attention. A single element within a larger space. The ocean often gives me this feeling. Its scale, its stillness at times, and its movement at others.
Standing in front of it, there is a quiet reminder of proportion. Of how small we are within something much larger.
Before I take the photograph, I also consider the technical side—exposure, balance, the basic decisions that allow the image to be captured well. But I tend to leave most of the interpretation for later.
In the moment, I am simply paying attention. And sometimes, that is enough.