what i know...i think

CANADA DAY
i know that the working method that i will adopt in rocky harbour is not my manner of working. i know that it will be too restrictive for someone who wants to see what is just over that hill or around that curve, especially when there will be no roads to do this. i don't like being on the photographic equivalent of a pitch count - a box a day. i like the nervous sweats of hoping that i brought enough film miles from the supply. i know that the curbing of my mobility will grate to no end but i hope to reach some sort of state where it is overcome. this happened in the first pouch cove residency where for the first time there were occasions when i couldn’t make a snap simply because i didn’t have the unwieldy camera with me. i do know that this is all a compromise where i want to work in residencies where there are no photographic facilities and thus the only option - until recently – is either to limit mobility or do half the work there and then come back and finish it. others have done this in different ways. either making as many snaps as possible in the period and then heading back to their studio when it was all over to edit and print or go away weekly to see what they have done and then return a bit more informed. want to be more direct. thinking in movie rushes i want to see that evening what i did that day. there will be plenty of time for this because my evenings lengthen there and i won’t be able to be my usual film guzzling self. i know that this isn’t really my working method as i am slow on my feet, i cannot think first then make a well reasoned snap as all that i find interesting is on the periphery of the “subject”, space around it, minor elements to be included etc. i cannot choose all of this without seeing the neg. i do want it to be self contained i want what say a painter would have at the end of a residency – which may show my ignorance of what painters do – a completed work. attempting to do this is embarrassing as the production involved is again the opposite of what i see photography as being – note taking and almost invisible. this certainly won’t be that. ironically i am relishing the time i will spend making the prints – in normal room light able able to read, be social etc, rather than in a specialised room. ideally i would take a room in the lower studio of the pipe house or the basement in martin and gabrielle’s and turn it into a darkroom. i would simply only use it after dark – after ideas - on to the overnight programming of radio one.