transluceo

Derwent Valley

Matt and I spent Valentine’s Day in the Peak District and I challenged myself into doing a little bit of filming while we were there. Not for likes, not for views, not for my portfolio… Purely for the joy of capturing things differently, without overthinking or wondering whether it’s any good or not.

I feel so disconnected from everyone’s priorities these days. Even when I remind myself that it’s okay, that life isn’t a race and there’s nothing wrong with wandering more slowly on a different path, it feels isolating at times.

Dreams and priorities shift. Life goes on. And though it may seem like I haven’t gone as far as I should have by now - as far as people thought I would -, the truth is... I’m content, and I feel like I’m exactly where I should be. What gets me up in the morning and gives me joy is as valid as anyone else’s. I have a roof over my head, food in the fridge, the best husband I could ever have dreamt of, an awesome pup... and I’m so ridiculously excited about all the things I’m working on at the moment, and the people I’m working with.

Not thinking about kids to raise and provide for, mortgages, or houses to buy doesn’t make me - or you, if you can relate - any less of a fully functioning adult.

Once I stopped looking for love and affirmation  in all the wrong places, I came to realise they’d already found me - hiding in plain sight

in between the notes, among the pine trees, in the warmth of a hug,

To be completely honest, I ended 2019 on a bit of a low. 

While everybody was sharing their highlights from the year and the decade, I was having some sort of identity crisis, feeling completely lost as to why I do what I do and what my purpose is. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since the new year and I’m only now starting to see things a little more clearly.

The thing is, I want to do so much more than just showing up and taking photos for songwriters and musicians. I want to find out who you are as an artist — what your music means to you and the people who connect with it, what your ambitions and dreams are, what inspires you and gets you up in the morning.

I want us to work together to create visuals that complement your music in the best way possible and make people want to check it out. Artworks, press shots, live photos that make them think “woah, they really care about their music and the way it’s presented… they’re serious about this.”

I love being involved in artists’ projects. And for me, that means not just being involved at the very end, when the music has been written, recorded, mixed and mastered, but earlier on. It’s having the freedom to hear the music in its early stages, coming up with too many ideas, discarding some, developing others, without the pressure of time; the freedom to not go for a cookie-cutter approach, and to not do things because everyone else seem to be doing it.

     “Sometimes the way to do what you want to do will be clear-cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.

     Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be - an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words - was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

     And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.”