Hi everyone ✌️All of a sudden, it’s been 12 months since the last time I sat down to write one of these. I thought it might be neat to explore my archive from this creatively varied year gone by, and review a few snaps from each month.
June
Returning to travelling this past month, with some very different scenery. From Toronto to Southern Italy with just a few days in between, and with wildly opposite goals of work and relaxing between the two destinations. I liked the Italian part. All of my friends should, I think, get married in a stunning place far away and I should be there with a camera to snap everything that I see. A lot of beautiful things to remember — but the one thing I can’t stop thinking about is the man who was riding his bike in the compact train station at Fasano, while the old man across from me watched TikTok videos at full blast, and I read my little saved magazine articles. Just three dudes, hiding out from all 35 of the degrees outside, living our lives. I loved that part.
May
Spring arrived, fully welcomed with long morning walks and open evening windows. I find the moments like those above the most fulfilling, just keeping an eye out for little things I loved in the places I felt most comfortable. I’m carrying a tiny pocketable digital (Ricoh GRIIIx) most often. It’s been a recovery from a long and rocky winter, and still simultaneously an embrace of everything that is new. All the rough seas of the first few months of the year has brought on a lot of interesting new personalities to try on for a bit - more adamant, more decisive, less empathetic, less scared. I’m still finding the right mix, but so far I’m enjoying the shake up. It was probably a bit overdue.
April
I had the opportunity to spend several days in Paris at the end of April. If that were a perpetual scenario, a sort of Groundhog Day situation where I could pick the days I’m eternally stuck within, it’d be among the top choices. On the last day, an afternoon train was the only thing waiting for me, so I woke up at 5am and wandered alone through a few arrondissements to see the city through some unfettered daylight. It’s some of the most creatively joyful work I’ve made in recent memory, with nothing to say, aside from ‘this is very pretty’.
March
Some weeks early in the month ostensibly felt as though they would never end, a winding labyrinth of false starts and mini failures. We were at the very start of our house project, yet when it began in 2024, we’d hoped would be just about wrapping up within March. I personally couldn’t imagine the finish line. I remember walking around in the sun on the day I snapped the scene above, and for a minute I allowed myself to pretend I was okay. Throwing myself into work felt like the most natural thing to do — in retrospect, it hurt more than it helped.
February
Before I sat down to write this, if you’d asked me what I did during the winter months in London, I’d have said nothing. Clearly, I have some reflecting to do on where that impulse comes from, because there were so many somethings. I focused on what mattered at the time. A lot of paperwork, a lot of asking for help, figuring out the new reality we’d thrown ourselves into not just as homeowners but as construction project managers. We took a Valentines’ Day walk with an audio guide to a part of the city we’d been to one thousand times, and saw amazing new things to observe with fresh perspectives. Isn’t that the point of it all, at the end.
January
Something fairly new in my life, within the past 3 years, is a renewed relationship with New York, which I thought we’d both grown exhausted of around 2020. At least twice a year I’m afforded the chance to give it another shot, and build upon my understanding of the ultimate street playground. This trip was pretty soon after a visit in the fall, and I had never felt more comfortable or loose in my approach to capturing the city; it was all practice, no mistakes, no missed opportunities. I largely attribute this renewed eagerness for NYC to the experience I wrote about in ‘Leaving Incidents Behind’.
December (2024)
There was a very conscious thought I held that the looming truth of 2025 was that I’d need to step back from creative pursuits. Call it self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe. What’s been clear since December, however, is that what’s necessary always makes time for itself. Had I more completely understood that at the time, I might have had an easier time bringing more of myself to the moments when my subconscious broke through the noise. I convinced myself to drown out the creative urge to make space for the active work that needed to be done, and that effort was (unfortunately) successful, however misguided.
November (2024)
Literally nothing to say about this month. I was sent to Barcelona - not really sure why. The leaves left us about mid way through the month, and they took with them any energy that remained in me to participate in real life.
October (2024)
Three days to myself to photograph an unseasonably warm and sunny fall weekend in New York might have been my favourite creative experience that I can recall. There was some magic in the air — multiple festivals popped up throughout the weekend, so an avenue could change completely from one morning to the next. I allowed myself to melt in the afternoons into a nice lunch spot or a park bench and just be present and grateful for what I’ve worked to accomplish and where it’s taken me.
September (2024)
Very interesting time, looking back on it — we’d been moving around all summer, up and down the Cornish coast, taking weekend-long hikes and cozying up in little boltholes with whatever incredible produce we found around the corner. From one new place to the next, I’d increasingly grown so accustomed to the natural beauty that was all around us, without much of a thought for what London would have waiting for us once we were back in early September. I think it was a bit of a shock to the system to get back to real life, but that shock is on me. I can’t say I was very present, with half a mind on a task miles away. Only during the long quiet hikes do I think I really settled in and enjoyed what was right in front of me. This is the final image I took the day before we left St. Ives.
August (2024)
Hikes, a lot of them, constantly. Every evening, we would walk for two or three hours along the coast, watching the surfers crash into the sea with an unearned confidence that I am still completely jealous to bring into my own life. There are too many stunning vistas to choose from, and I miss that big sky always changing with it’s own incorrigible mood, as if to say ‘give up control, I’m in charge here’.
July (2024)
As recently as five minutes ago, I would have sworn to you that we left London in June of 2024 for the coast, but that’s apparently not true. Sorry to everyone I’ve been telling a white lie to for the past year. It was mid-July, and I got a new camera for my birthday, which (if she’s reading this) was the best present anyone has ever gotten me. It’s changed the way that I interact with the world every day, and one of my favourite things to do is take pictures of you. All of the hikes we did, I’d just hover in the back, so that any time I felt like it, I could snap a quick photo of you and the dog to remember it all.