8th April 2020. Lockdown 1.0. A lovely day outside. I walk past the open door of my utility space and am struck by the amazing light streaming in through the utility windows, highlighting the washing machine door and surrounding paraphanalia. Its awesome. I grab my phone and take the shot….
A few days beforehand I had decided to try to take some lockdown shots to see what I could make of any photo opportunities around the house. After all, we couldnt get out to take shots so what could I do indoors to scratch the itch? Stuck inside with nowhere to go, you realise your home can look beautiful in its own way and be the subject of your fascination. You ask yourself, ‘What if the light falls on this just so?’. New possibilities present themselves, new appreciation arises………or maybe its just the desperation of not being able to get out to take any decent photos?! But it was the dramatic, almost religious lighting in this scene, that really brought home to me how the quality of light can transform an everyday scene into a captivating aria. The strong lighting streaming in through the window and pooling in that washing machine door, just stopped me dead. I took another image that day and so, without knowing, a project and a series were born.
Discussing this image with Rob Knight, wondering why I found this image so captivating and how I would ever pluck up the courage to show a shot of a washing machine, I was directed to John Blakemore’s website. Reading through John’s blog entries on his self-imposed ‘lockdown’ images I was struck by his descriptions of light.

Our domestic spaces are so familiar, so known, as to be almost invisible. Task one then, is to recoup a visual awareness of our surroundings. To make the familiar once more strange, once more of intrigue. Let the vehicle for this exploration be light. For photographers how could it be otherwise!

So, begin to watch the light intensely. The torrent of light that enters a window, how it disperses around the space, slides over the surface of a table, caresses the edge of a chair, gleams for a moment on glass or pottery, lights a shelf of books, travels through the space, flecks the walls, disperses.

John Blakemore, ‘Interior Light 1’

Of late, those images have been of moments of light. Light entering a doorway, sneaking through curtains, infiltrating space in unexpected places, in unexpected ways. Or of light in the garden, describing, picking out an odd leaf, hiding others in shadow, elements emphasised by focus.

John Blakemore, ‘Seeing Light’

This was it! This was my moment of realisation, my moment of light! John’s words resonated so strongly with me, like a bell being struck by a hammer. This is what I was doing, not just with these images but with much of my photography, I am reacting to ‘moments of light’.
This realisation that it was OK to take photos of my washing machine and patches of light on the wall, was liberating. John Blakemore no less, valildated it, said it was OK, normal even………OK perhaps not quite?! But from here I took stronger notice of my reactions to these moments, gave myself more license to grab the camera at these moments and take pictures of stairgates and sofa cushions.

Contrary to John though, I found that for me, these moments had to be expressed in B&W. Most of the images lend themselves to this to accentuate the form, abstract the everyday and force the focus onto the key elements of the image. Colour just seemed to distract from these elements and make the objects of the image too easy to identify. For the images to be considered by others as more than just shots of familar household items, it would seem helpful to abstract them to make them unrecognisable, or at least focus on details usually overlooked, so that the photogenic elements are considered rather than the physical. The knots in the wood of the floorboards and the grain therein, lend themselves to this and find new emphasis in this B&W genre of ‘household photography’. Shapes and shadows can be firm-edged and focussed or soft and shapeless, potentially adding to the mystique of the image. New drama unfolds in this spotlit, high contrast world where everyday items take on new roles and significance, the ‘Toy Story’ version of the photography world.

So why do these ‘Moments of Light’ grab me so? What do these moments and these images make me feel? I am drawn to high contrast lighting in images. I find graphic shapes and lines appealing. These scenes possess this, looking almost architectural at times. They look clean, cleansed, fresh in some way, new, newborn perhaps. The scenes stop me dead, ooze warmth and speak to me, a quiet tune or choral song even, and this makes me stop to consider them. Those images with criss-crossing lines of light feel more chaotic, more unsettling , but the arrangement draws on your curiosity, draws you into the image to consider what it is or why its causing this reaction.

How do they make me feel? I feel exhilaration, excitement at the moment of seeing the light. Having captured it and recognised that i have noticed something perhaps no-one else has seen or will see again as the wonderful warmth of the light fades to reveal the banality of the household object. I feel uplifted, joyous and content and long for the next occasion.

I said that this has born a series, not just a project. I realised that this response to moments of light was also reflected in my outdoor images. So often I stop to capture the beauty of the patchwork of light that filters through the leaves of trees, the strong light reflecting off building windows, even sunsets can be considered a ‘moment of light’ due to their transience and changing colour scheme. These are the times when I stop and am captivated by the patches of light that bathe the scene in a warm glow, making it appear at times that the trees are on fire as the warm light catches the tops, that light is bursting from inside a building or that the setting sun is putting on a show only for me. The sonorous exposition of these moments, is a hugely uplifting and spiritual experience and requires only that we stop to look and take notice with wonder in our hearts.