Hmmmmm......sometimes......I like to go close to the edge....... both physically and in terms of my own limits....... I always think I will not be afraid...

... but when they open the airplane door and I have to reach out and hold the wing strut...... immediately I think woow I can't do this...... then I do it...... as soon as I am looking through my cameras..... I have forgotten the drop below......

I am in the operation room the surgeons are attempting to save his life by removing the shrapnel from his guts....... I am working away photographing.... then they are holding bits of his intestines out of his body ..... a picture of this can never be shown..... so I come out from behind my camera..... then..... Im just a guy standing there looking.... not protected by cameras....... I suddenly think..... woow...... Im gonna pass out..... so i have to dive out of the operating theatre.

Looking over the physical edge....... down to the sea below.... those images can have a dream like quality but often the experience of actually being there is a dramatic in the now issue of wind and cliff and handholds...... but the images reflect beauty and timelessness......

Here is one I shot recently :

http://www.jezblog.com/index.php?showimage=891

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXX

Hi Jez,

Great to hear from you! Peering through a viewfinder does have a way of separating the photographer from the event - there are at least a couple of examples of film cameramen filming the tank or soldier that eventually shot them...

Not quite in the same league, I photographed some car racing action and had to make a 'just in time' move when I realised that the cars were dramatically and beautifully crashing into me...

For these Edges shots I will confess to using my tripod as a walking stick to help getting across the hideously slippery rocks. A couple of times I thought I was on my way... But hey, you gotta suffer for your art...!

Steve

Beautiful, beautiful images, Steve and Jez.

I saw something different and unconnected with edges. The more I looked the more I was drawn to the fissures and cracks in the rocks. And the different colours in the rocks and finally the evidence of active ancient gases, long gone and set in stone but still conveying anger and turmoil. That is in the honeycomb features in the bottom right of the image. Even as I write, I am thinking how incongruous the word 'honeycomb' is in the context of the turmoil and seething danger I feel from the image.

The mist above the river gives me an uneasy sense of foreboding - and also timelessness. Is it mist? Is it steam? Are the rocks still seething, scalding hot beneath the water?

Noticing was a process, going from 'that's a beautiful and arresting image' to seeing details, then reflecting on what I felt and was thinking. As you say, Steve, we can project whatever meaning we wish onto the image.

The image speaks to me of continuity, change, everything staying the same, and our supposed civilisation being so superficial it is almost funny. It makes me feel like I did when I was a wee girl playing shops with stones for money and mud for produce. In the face of the universe and this evidence of our miniscule corner of it, that is what I am still doing every day.

The thing that draws me into the shot is the misty quality of the sea. For some reason, I expect the stark, deeply stained rock edges to reveal a dark pool of water beneath them rather than a light, wispy cloud-like vapour. There's something slightly mystical or spiritual about that. The thing I find my eye returning back to is the trickle of spinach-green seaweed running down the rock behind the mist. I wonder where it leads and what happens beneath the vapour, as if there's some kind of alchemy at play. What an incredible shot, Steve. I both recognise it's realness and find it eerily alien. Provocative as ever! Loz :)

Anne Marie and Loz,

Thanks for your comments; very interesting... Yes, how do these rocks speak to us in this kind of way? In an email today a friend asked what my own response was to these images. I wrote, "In both images I find my sense of time dislocated and a new agenda forming as a result - a sense of animate participation and a respect for the rocks and water. Both have been around for a long time..."

And so the implication for me is that as we definitely haven't been around for so long we would do well to enjoy and care for these landscapes. I think I had some kind of empathy for that line of seaweed - we're just hanging on...

Lynda, if you get to reading this I realise that I'm resisting mentioning 'spiritual'. What's that all about?

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Steve

Hi Steve, you've asked for comments. I like the images very much. No great description of my response I think at this stage. I think there are interesting, beautiful other worldly things and creatures lurking beneath the mist. It is Cornwall after all. I like what I cannot see beneath the mist. And I have long had a great love of staring at rocks.

What I really like is the sense of what you are trying to do with this blog, and your photo work. Not being a primarily visual person myself (music, sound, bodies tend to be more my natural thing) I am really appreciating the way you use images, photos to explore and inquire around responses, personal questions and also questions of reality, projection, construction etc. All while producing something beautiful

Hello Tim, thanks for your comment. I love your line, "I like what I cannot see beneath the mist..." One evening, I was photographing as the tide came in and was looking at the water flood a small gorge I had been swimming in earlier that day. The idea that I had been swimming perhaps 3 metres below the water I was watching splash onto the rock completely captivated me... Something about perspective and time; and the stories we could tell... An insight into a different dimension of how we experience our environment?