Out and About

I struggle to see pictures in black and white. I use my iPhone camera, set to black and white, taking snapshots to help train my eye, hoping to get a feel for which scenes and subjects will make for moving and evocative images. Landscapes are also not my strength, so this roll of film was a challenge—black and white and landscapes, mostly. I have some questions about tones, preferring the softness of a gentle sepia color to the starkness of straight up black and white. But I don’t have a consistent workflow to process film scans to produce those tones. At least not in the same way, with the same tones, so as to create a body of work with consistency and flow. So much to learn . . .

Beaver Dam, Caroline County, Virginia June 2023

Fallen Tree, Government Island, Stafford, Virginia, June 2023

Country Roads

I spend some time watching Kyle McDougall’s video, 3 Key Lessons I Learned Making My First Photobook. I love Kyle’s book, An American Mile, and add it to my wish list. Studying his pictures sends me back to my own. His views of the American West are fascinating to me because they feel simultaneously familiar and foreign. The East Coast has old abandoned buildings and wide open views, but the skies and the surroundings are different. Everything here in Virginia is so green. This is another of those pictures that I deemed unworthy—mostly because after awhile, falling down houses begin to feel like a cliché. But on second thought, views like this are part of my everyday life. Absolutely worthy of attention. A page in the photobook, A Virginia Summer.

Rethinking

Home is a complicated construct. Not really the charming cottage with curated dinners. At least, not most of the time. Maybe more like the trees that surround us . . . with both roots and wounds that run deep. There is an abiding sense of where we came from—but who we are—that might develop based on the tension between belonging and raging to be set free.

Orange Appeal

A kind friend once pointed out that I have a long-standing love affair with the color orange. At least when it comes to photography. I still can’t believe I hadn’t noticed. But she was absolutely right. These pictures often don’t “fit” with the others I take. But they always bring me great joy, and they definitely make me wonder if there is a bright little girl trying to escape from my fairly neutral life. I remain open to the possibilities throughout my entire story.

We create beauty and magic not in spite of impermanence but because of it. We can’t change what came before, and only the unknown lies ahead. That fleeting nature of whatever this current moment is? That’s what asks of us to to dance a little wilder, color a little brighter, sing a little louder.
—Anna Brones, Creative Fuel