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
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
on being
Posted on June 29, 2014
horizon
Posted on October 2, 2013
The line between the sea and the sky is
the end, and then the beginning of something
new. A promise
to Future’s wings which
fan the fire of juvenile desire
and go! Flee! Don’t turn back your eyes
must face forwards now and new things will be yours
to mould in your cupped hands like a smooth,
ripe mango. Many a journey lingers in your
laughter and foamy fingers cling to your stern,
but don’t look back on your wistful daydream
it stays there still on the shore and looks on,
upon the horizon.
Sure and sheer it cuts
a straight line clear as the deftness of your serious eyes
which gently tug the sky back to the earth
and yes, a neat line is a satisfying thing nestling
in the smudges of drab grey space which surround us.
Some things can be wonky and charming like
teeth, or fringes.
But not a horizon.
© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013
find me
Posted on September 16, 2013
find me unravelling the forest floor
find me hugging the crest of a sandy shore
find me wrapped in a gauze of Spring, when Autumn comes
that’s where you’ll find me
© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013
The Canyon
Posted on September 3, 2013
I wasn’t going to post any pictures from the Grand Canyon, as they weren’t really very good, but then I got some black and white prints back from the rolleiflex, and I realised they had captured something I wasn’t able to capture in digital.
This one best sums up the awe and the austerity of the landscape, I think.
© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013
A bit of rollei candy
Posted on August 6, 2013
… for all you rollei lovers 🙂
© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013
For later
Posted on March 24, 2013
I wonder if she will remember this moment. The feeling of his vast hands cocooning hers. All the impetuous haste of youth, she had.
I can do it!
He tried to slow her down. To show her. With the wisdom of the knowing tortoise. (She didn’t listen, of course.)
I have saved it for her, anyhow. For later.
For when she is ready to remember. When she needs to understand who she was, and who she might be.
© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013
Coherence
Posted on March 10, 2013
The sky drops right down to the sea, and shears a perfect horizon at the edge of the world where the air meets salt water. The sea exhales, lilting undulant murmurs which curl and crease up to a wrinkle and then smooth again in turn. Rise and fall. As regular and certain as the breath, as the expanding and contracting of the lungs.
The sun flickers and wanes. A light bulb going out. It skips and glints across the frothy tips.
It’s always there, and always to be found. Once it has found you, and you have absorbed its salted sweet essence it will seep into a chamber of your heart and never leave. You will always be able to find it there, when you need it.
And you will always come back for more.
*****
© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013
My grandfather’s sitting room
Posted on October 6, 2012
