Photography as a Way of Seeing.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

When I got back into photography, a penny dropped about something that had once stopped me from progressing. Not just with the medium of photography itself, but also with a deeper understanding of art. Covid and the months that followed were when I picked up a camera again. I had actually been tinkering with the idea of photography after a ten-year hiatus, but Covid forced my hand, and I am grateful for the opportunity this somewhat dark period offered.

Initially armed with a mobile phone and lots of spare time, I would walk the streets and promenade of Brighton, capturing the architectural delights on offer. Humans became a background part of my image making, and this allowed me to nurture composition while also considering how I would shoot an image in RAW for post-shoot editing. For those not familiar, a RAW file is the equivalent of a digital negative. It allows the photographer to make decisions afterwards about how the final image should look, much like what is possible in the analogue darkroom. This wandering of the streets made me see in a very different way, and over time, as I moved from phone back to a dedicated camera, a symbiosis took place. The camera became an extension of me. I wouldn't so much look for photographs; instead, they would appear from the ether, and it was my job to capture the moment. Maybe for me, maybe for others, or maybe just another one for the bag. This searching process I believe is very much at the heart of the urban photographer where staging of imagery is less necessary.

Without my knowing or realising, I was also getting a fundamental education in colour. I had read books and watched videos, but colour theory isn't just a textbook subject. There is also something innate, something built into our makeup, where certain colours seem to work naturally with one another. We have incorporated this into our everyday lives through adverts, television and the clothes we wear. Alongside the magic the camera now seemed to possess, colour became another part of this awakening process.

So now I was armed with a camera I understood, colour theory made a huge amount of sense, and composition had become almost instinctual. Naturally, I developed a thirst to learn more about art. What makes people tick? How and why do artists use certain tricks and devices in their work to draw people in, and with anything worth learning, one never stops. The direction may change, but the thirst always needs slaking.

This is where I find myself now. The hunger to learn and create comes in equal measure. What has changed is the constancy of work. Whereas I once shot daily, I now spend more time thinking ideas through, sketching, considering materials and, above all, light.

In many ways, I've come full circle. I picked up the camera again thinking I was rediscovering photography, when in reality I was learning how to see. The photographs were never really the destination; they were simply proof that I had slowed down long enough to notice something.

That feeling hasn't gone away. If anything, it has become stronger. Photography got me through the door, but it also introduced me to art in its broadest sense. I still get things wrong, still disappear down the odd creative cul-de-sac, but that's all part of it. The more I learn about light, colour, materials and perception, the more I realise there is another layer waiting to be uncovered. Photography as a way of seeing merely started the journey.

These days, I don't feel the need to have all the answers. The more I learn, the more I realise that certainty is probably overrated anyway. It is the questions, the experimenting and occasionally getting things completely wrong that seem to move things forward. As long as I'm still curious, still looking and still making, then I think I'm heading in the right direction.

Trafalgar Street - Brighton. 2020 C. Ribeiro. Just as Covid was breaking...