Ways of Seeing

Hurry Up and Wait

Some photographers plan their shots with military precision. Not me. Mine happen because I stayed, wandered, watched, waited, and accepted what the day brought me. Sometimes rain. Sometimes nuffin. Somehow, always light.

Gatecrashing the Rock Pool Creche

One Fur Seal pup, clearly doing important field research for the Department of Bad Ideas, kept inching towards the gatecrasher in the rock pool.

Huffy Puffins

A puffin disagreement, a possible romantic scandal, and an entire cliffside audience behaving as though someone had shouted “fight!” in a school playground.

The Joy of Small Seals

Over four months at Cape Palliser, I kept returning to the fur seal pups in the rockpools. At first they scattered whenever I arrived. Then, slowly, they forgot about me and returned to the important business of bubbles, seaweed, tiny teeth, ambushes, and small wet chaos.

Puffins in the Long Light

For four evenings, I drove out to Látrabjarg in search of puffins and found only wind, burrows, and nuffins. On the fifth evening, the cliffs were suddenly full of them; calm, golden, unhurried. I had the quiet privilege of sitting among them for a while.