Soft
What happens when you stop trying to get it right
Soft was made long before most of this collection. It came earlier, on an afternoon in my mum's garden, experimenting with a macro lens I had borrowed from a friend. But when I began building this collection, selecting images that held the same quality of attention and the same feeling of presence, this one belonged.
I was using equipment I didn't yet fully understand, in a familiar garden, with no particular subject in mind. The afternoon was mild and warm light filtered through the garden without harsh contrast. I was in the kind of open, undemanding state that experimentation sometimes creates. Not directing, just noticing. What happens if I try this angle? If I shift the focus point by a fraction? If I get closer than feels comfortable?
The very narrow focal range of a macro lens is unforgiving. A millimetre of movement changes the entire character of the image. Learning that taught me something about attention: how much is lost when you move too quickly, and how much appears when you hold still.
There are artistic choices in this image I might make differently now. But I have kept them, because they are honest. They record exactly where I was in my learning, and they hold the quality of a day when I was not trying to be good at something. I was simply staying close to it, open to what it might show me. That is what this collection is about. Soft belongs here because it is the same feeling, found somewhere else.
