The Time To See

A few years ago, I returned home after what felt like a gru­el­ing peri­od of inten­sive trav­el and found the best way to wind down was to walk slow­ly in the sur­round­ing coun­try­side where I live. Ini­tial­ly, pho­tog­ra­phy was the fur­thest thing I would regard as relax­ing, so I chose to stroll. I do not think I am alone when I say the eyes of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er seem to con­stant­ly make images even when there is no con­cert­ed effort from the per­son that owns them.

Each time I walked I became a lit­tle more famil­iar with my sur­round­ings which I con­sid­ered to be very famil­iar in the first place. Many of the evenings I head­ed out were ones of cold breezes that nip at your neck fol­lowed by a rais­ing of the shoul­ders to keep it out. The air was damp, and all was grey with the grips of win­ter and all, but the bird­song ren­dered the place dead. 

I soon came to realise that that my per­cep­tion of the land­scape hin­dered any sug­ges­tion of beau­ty, but it was there sur­round­ing me. After some time, and with no set agen­da, I allowed myself to take a cam­era and decid­ed to see if I could ​‘see’. I did not take long, and with a lit­tle patience, I con­nect­ed with the rem­nants of the pass­ing sea­sons and the beau­ty that remained almost everywhere.