Dreaming of What Could Be

Every photograph I care about starts long before I lift the camera. It starts as a feeling, a half-formed picture that drifts around in my head while I'm doing perfectly ordinary things like waiting for the kettle or hunting for my car keys. I can see it quite clearly in there. Getting it out of my head and onto a wall is another matter entirely.

I want my images to have presence and purpose in people's lives. Not just something pleasant above the sofa, but a picture that asks a quiet question each time you walk past it. And more and more, I find myself wanting to take an ordinary moment and turn it into something a little stranger and more interesting than the scene I actually stood in front of.

The ordinary moment

This one began on a blustery day by the sea. The water was restless, rolling in with that silvery texture you only get when the light can't quite decide what it's doing. Along the shoreline came a walker and her dog, both completely absorbed in their own little world. It was lovely, and it was also, if I'm honest, the kind of scene a thousand people photograph every weekend.

What I saw in my mind's eye was something softer. Something ethereal, as though you were remembering the walk rather than watching it. I wanted the narrative to be slightly confused, a little ambiguous, so the viewer has to bring something of their own to it. Is she arriving or leaving? Is it a memory, a dream, or a moment that never quite happened?

Enter the net curtain

Which is how I came to be standing on a beach holding a scrap of net curtain in front of a rather expensive lens.

I'd bought a small piece especially for the job, and I can tell you the lady in the shop did not ask what it was for, which is probably just as well. The idea was simple enough. Hold the fabric across the lens while shooting and let it gently distort the scene, softening the edges and blurring the line between what's real and what's imagined.

The reality was less elegant. The wind had its own opinions about the curtain. It flapped, it folded, it wrapped itself around the lens hood, and at one point it made a determined bid for freedom across the sand. Some frames were pure fog. Others looked like I'd photographed the scene through a slightly grubby kitchen window, which, to be fair, is roughly what I had done. The dog, meanwhile, was entirely uninterested in my artistic struggle and kept walking out of the frame at exactly the wrong moment.

The gap between the vision and the result

I think this is the part of making art that nobody puts on the poster. You have a clear vision, you set off full of hope, and then the world refuses to cooperate. The light changes, the wind picks up, your clever idea turns out to be far harder in practice, and you come home with a card full of near misses.

Every artist I know lives in that gap between the picture in their head and the one they actually achieve. Sometimes the gap closes. Often it doesn't, and you go back again, and again, adjusting a little each time. There's a lot of trial, plenty of tribulation, and the occasional moment of quiet triumph when a single frame suddenly looks like the thing you dreamed about. Those moments are worth all the flapping curtains in the world.

What I've learned is that the struggle isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's the process. The happy accidents only happen because you were out there trying something slightly daft in the first place.

Folding the sea

Having finally coaxed an image I was happy with, I couldn't quite leave it alone. I'm now experimenting with the print itself, giving it a concertina fold so the surface rises and falls in a series of gentle pleats.

It changes everything about how the picture behaves. As you move past it, the light catches each fold differently, and the sea seems to shift and breathe. The walker and her dog are broken into slices and stitched back together, which only adds to that dreamlike uncertainty. It's no longer just a photograph you look at, but something that responds to you as you move around the room.

It's still very much an experiment. Some folds work beautifully, others look like I've sat on the print. But that's half the fun.

Dreaming of what could be

That's really what this piece is about for me. Not the walk on the beach, but the dreaming that came before it and the stubborn, slightly ridiculous effort it took to bring the dream a little closer to reality. A scrap of net curtain, a lot of wind, an uncooperative dog and a fold or two of paper.

I'd love to know what you see in it. Arriving or leaving, memory or dream? There's no right answer, and I rather hope there never will be.