I couldn’t tell you the exact date, but I could tell you the weather. It was a grey, ordinary sort of afternoon, the kind England specialises in, and I’d borrowed my father’s camera without asking, which tells you something about how badly I wanted to use it. I photographed the garden shed. Not the roses, not anyone’s face, just an old wooden shed with the paint peeling off one corner. I’ve no idea what possessed me, except that the light was doing something interesting to it, and I wanted to see if I could catch that.
I got the film developed at a chemist’s in town, and I remember the odd mixture of nerves and excitement waiting for the little wallet of prints to come back. When I finally saw it, the shed looked nothing like I remembered it looking through the viewfinder, and yet it was somehow more like itself than the real thing. I didn’t have the words for that feeling then. I’m not sure I have better ones now, all these years later.
That gap, between what you see and what the camera gives back, is the thing that’s kept me at this for the best part of my life. It was true in the darkroom, it was true with Photoshop, and it’s still true now, sitting at a computer asking software to make something out of a description. The tools have changed almost beyond recognition. The gap hasn’t.
I still don’t fully know what I’m chasing when I start a new picture. I just know I’ll recognise it when it turns up, the way I recognised that shed all those years ago. Thank you for reading this far. Do have a look at what’s in the shop; some of it started life in stranger ways than a garden shed.