Field Notes · an essay on attention

I keep the camera I always have with me.

A single orange cosmos flower in sharp focus against a shaded garden path.
Opening frameCosmos in the Lane

Everything in this archive was photographed on a phone. Not as a constraint to apologise for, but as the whole point: the phone is the camera that is present when something worth noticing happens.

Most of these frames were not planned. A leaf held rain a little longer than expected. A tower stood still under a moving sky. A cat decided, briefly, to trust. The photographs exist because the noticing came first.

The archive is grouped into small worlds — travel, temples, close things, living things, food — because that is roughly how the noticing happens too.

The phone is the camera that is present when something worth noticing happens.

Recurring subjects

What keeps asking to be photographed.

  1. 01weather arriving before it arrives
  2. 02architecture older than the street around it
  3. 03water, in any form
  4. 04animals who tolerate being seen
  5. 05food that looks like where it came from
A whitewashed temple tower stacked tier upon tier against a saturated blue sky.
02The White TowerField note
A tabby cat with eyes closed, leaning into a hand scratching its head.
03A Cat, ContentField note
Rainwater splashing off a dark street, buildings dissolving into grey behind it.
04Rain, Falling HardField note

The noticing came first.

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