Welcome to Field Notes
Last Ember — Port Alberni BC
Every photograph has a story that happens before the shutter ever clicks — and most of it never makes it into the frame. Field Notes is where I write that part down.
The name is borrowed from the small notebooks photographers and naturalists carry into the field: the place you jot what you saw, where you stood, what the light was doing, what you were trying to say. That's what this journal is — not a highlight reel of finished images, but the working notes behind them.
So what will you find here?
The venture out, for one. A lot of my favourite images come from places that take some getting to — a gravel road above town, a headland at the end of a trail, a cold pier long after everyone's gone home. I'll tell you how I got there, and what it was like to be there.
The preparation, too. A night-sky shot rarely just happens. There's a new moon to wait for, a forecast to second-guess, an app that tells me when and where the Milky Way's core will clear the ridgeline. Moon phase, sun position, tides, cloud and haze, that narrow window of usable light — I plan around all of it, and I'll walk you through how.
And the thinking behind the shot — the part I find most interesting. Why this composition and not the one a step to the left. How I read the light and decide what to expose for. What I wanted the image to feel like before I knew whether I could pull it off.
I'll talk gear when it matters, but this won't be a gear blog. The camera is just the tool. What I care about is the seeing.
Here's a quick example of what I mean. The Milky Way image now hanging at The Bombers Café started weeks before the photo existed — watching the moon phase, holding out for a night with no cloud and no haze, then driving up into the quiet hills above Port Alberni, setting up the tripod in the dark, and waiting until almost 3am for the Milky Way to swing into place over the mountains and the trees. The photograph is the last line of a long entry. Field Notes is the rest of it.
If that's the kind of thing you'd like to follow along with, you're in the right place. New entries will land here as I make new work — installations, night-sky chases, and the stories behind the prints.
Thanks for reading, and welcome.
— George