The Observer
The Observer is the first thing the forest offered me, before I had even properly arrived.
We were still in the car park when I saw the rosella. A flash of red and blue in the high branches of an old tree. Because of the steepness of the hill I was on, I was almost at eye level with the bird, a perspective you rarely get with something that high from the ground. It was simply there. Settled. Not startled by us, not performing. Just quietly observing everything around it, which is exactly what I had come to do.
My mum always said: accept the opportunity when it appears, even before you feel ready. The forest said the same thing, immediately, in the shape of this bird. I hadn't settled in yet. I hadn't found my eye or my rhythm. I was still feeling uncertain about whether I would be able to do justice to a place I had waited years to see. And here with this small, vivid, unhurried life, doing the thing I needed to do came with complete ease.
The Observer is not a wildlife photograph. It is a photograph about presence. The bird and I were both doing the same thing in that moment: taking in this world from our own small vantage point, without needing to understand all of it. That is what this piece quietly asks of the person who lives with it. Not to have all the answers. Simply to be somewhere, and pay attention to what is there.
