searchingtoseeblack and white
Posted on July 14, 2015
I’m trying to work on a new black and white image, so I’ve been playing around with a few ideas.
© images and words by Emily Hughes, 2015
these watery things
Posted on July 7, 2015
My life is going through a lot of changes at the moment. These are changes which I have instigated. Things are shifting. It is exciting, but extremely unsettling, and there are times when I question my motives for stirring up the waters. I question why I am constantly compelled to confront what is real and safe and solid. Sometimes it helps me to express these feelings with my images and sometimes I write words too, which I cannot call as substantial as poetry or prose, but…. well, they are just something.
***
In these moments, when the frayed ends of a tightly wound skein begin to unravel. When the warm, solid earth beneath my feet seems to shift. When I look up, and even the clear blue sky wavers and shimmers, teasing like a mirage in the temperate desert heat. Watery things are playful things; beguiling and dissembling. They steal the light and scatter it joyfully like pebbles, skimming this way and that. Dodging and darting here and there.
Impossible to gather in my arms.
Every time I look, things are different… as if my eyes are shifting. A pair of aqueous orbs.
Every time, it is new.
Don’t confess your secrets to those watery things. They will suck them in greedily and and then spit them out like polished cherry stones.
© images and words by Emily Hughes, 2015
reaching for star dust
Posted on June 26, 2015
I love photographing seed heads. It’s a mild obsession of mine. They are a popular subject these days, it seems, appearing on everything from kitchenware to lino prints. I’m a big fan of Angie Lewin’s lino cuts especially. I think it is a bold simplicty in their structural form, and an unassuming elegance which makes them so enticing and lends itself so well to so many different media. I have always felt like they are beseeching in some way; offering up their fragile form to the wide open sky. To me, they have become a symbol of the infinite, innocent generosity of nature’s gentle rhythm.
Usually, I would reach for the macro lens and get in close (as I did here, here, here, and here again!), but I decided to try out my rollei with some black and white medium format shots for a different perspective, still keeping the aperture as wide as I could. Unfortunately I had a bit of a light leaking incident, which is why the last image has a flecked, slightly grainy appearance (the film was fine grain), but I decided not to correct this. I quite like the otherworldly effect. It’s a bit like a meteor shower, or some other celestial phenomenon. As if their willowy limbs are tentatively reaching out to greet a scatter of star dust.
© images and words by Emily Hughes, 2015
the little things
Posted on March 25, 2015
I love macro photography. It forces you to slow down, and take notice of what is around you. There is something really so wonderfully involved about focussing in on the minutiae of life. It’s a bit like discovering a secret world – the more you delve into it, the more you want to explore.
And suddenly something as small and insignificant as a blade of grass can take centre stage, and become, well, a thing of pure wonder.
© words and images Emily Hughes, 2015
frangipani flower
Posted on January 25, 2015
… a little burst of sunshine.
© words and image Emily Hughes, 2015
powder puff dreams
Posted on January 18, 2015
I found this unusual flower on my trip to Sri Lanka where the hotel grounds were scattered with them. After some research I discovered they are from the tree ‘barringtonia racemosa’, otherwise known as the ‘powder puff tree’. They really do look like exquisite little powder puffs – dreamy, light and graceful. I love the way the festive shocks of vibrant pink and gold contrast against the creamy white strands. They look so elegant and otherworldly – like floating sea anemones, or delicately unravelling strands of silk – against the rustic earthy- grey concrete wall. I overlaid textures of crumbling Sri Lankan walls to the images to give added character.
desire, 2014
© images and words Emily Hughes, 2015
birdwatching (II)
Posted on January 9, 2015
I don’t often photograph birds, mainly because I’m not a fan of big unwieldy telephoto lenses. It is not because I don’t like birds; quite the opposite in fact. Although I don’t confess to being an expert, I can spot a few more common varieties, and I appreciate their beauty and grace. More recently, my six-year old daughter has become obsessed with birds, and enjoys spotting and painting them, at the keen instruction of Alex – nature lover and regular bird expert. We spend a fair amount of our free family time at RSPB reserves, and more recently at this WWT wetlands centre in Slimbridge (which is well worth a visit). It was a beautifully clear, ice-cold frosty day and the light was pure gold. Perfect. Quite the most beautiful light I’ve seen in a long time, actually. Usually at these places I’m content to busy myself with photographing the scenery, or getting up close with my macro lens, but the swans, ducks and geese were abundant and friendly, so I managed to get close enough to steal a few decent shots.
I named this part II, because I realised I had done another birdwatching post in Easter 2013 (although there were no birds in that one – just an egg!).
© images and words Emily Hughes, 2015
breathe
Posted on January 1, 2015
When I push the shutter release, I close my eyes.
(Annelies Strba, from Shades of Time)
I have done a lot of reflecting during this holiday period. I’ve read a lot of blog posts and facebook updates about fresh starts and being thankful and realising what’s important, and all that. I’m not knocking any of it. It’s all good and true, of course. It’s been refreshing, and liberating, to have some time to just be without the pressures of work and the day-to-day (of course I know this is only a temporary state, so I’m bracing myself for the full onslaught which comes with immersing myself back into the deep end of life). One thing which has struck me head on, though, throughout all the great stuff (and there is lots of great stuff!) is just how busy 2014 has been. And not entirely in a good way. I always like being busy. I need busy. But I have learned it is definitely not good to busy yourself to the point that you find yourself collapsing in a crumpled heap over the finish line on your hands and knees with a white flag between your teeth. It ends, usually, in tears, frustration and wounds, the kind of which you can’t slap a plaster on; the kind which take much time and effort to heal. It benefits no-one in the end, least of all you.
So at the start of this year. This shiny, brand spanking new clean sheet of a year, I am going to gift myself some much needed advice.
Just give yourself a moment.
Just breathe.
Breathe in
and out.
Look.
Close your eyes
and
see.
Happy New Year to all, and I wish you a peaceful, fulfilling and inspiring year ahead.
© images and words Emily Hughes, 2015
grace
Posted on December 28, 2014
There is a quiet sort of grace in the gentle ebb and flow of the world around us; the sparse, sinewed kink of flowers against a stone wall; the comforting swell of a hilltop on a mountain walk; the twist of the dying roses’ sepal artfully languishing in an old glass beer bottle of a busy café. Even the merest ripple in a lake on a still day; the dense, deft weave of wild forest grasses, or the willowy elegence of noiseless pine trees [how many years have they stood, poised and calm as the wisest of shaman, hushed, mighty and knowing as we rush around like crazed ants at their feet, lost in the dark. They watch us bump into each other beneath them and curse and move on as they sigh and shake their noble emerald heads above in the clouds]. These are the things which quicken my heart and steady my breath. When so many big things are happening. Things I don’t understand; things which cannot be understood. I look for the quiet things.
******************************
I wrote this post a few months ago, before I lost my way with blogging, and life [temporarily – it’s good to be back. I’ve missed it more than I can say]. I still find it relevant now; perhaps even more so given I have spent a lot of time recently reflecting on
intent
[in relation to my life, and my practice]
and
grace
[a word which emerged from these thoughts]
It’s heartening to know, coming back to my blog now to find this post, that I might have been on the right track.
Time to get back to it.
© images and content Emily Hughes, 2014
searchingtosee 
