As the calendar year draws to a close there is a temptation to take stock of where you’ve come from, how the journey has been and where you have arrived at. So here goes…

This has been a year of change. I suppose you could say that about most years, but I do feel this year has been about re-evaluation and change. Simplification and stripping back have been recurrent themes running through most of what I have done over the past 4 years but none more so than this year. That extends to camera gear, clothes (though don’t take the ‘stripping back’ too literally here), car, the accoutrements of daily life even my watch; all becoming as simple as possible.

Simplification even changed our travel destinations. Sue and I haven’t travelled long-distance this year. No trips to the far-flung. Southern Spain and Greece have been our chosen countries this year. That, in itself, was a sizeable change. However, more significantly, photographically I have been working on other projects.

For those who are curious: I have become more interested in shape and form in general rather than being fixated on people – though inevitably they will appear in my work. And yes, paradoxically, I still enjoy making street portraits.

I have started to see elegance in the everyday elements of our surroundings. That’s where I’m pointing the cameras gazing eye. At the ordinary, the mundane, yes, the banal.

Some of the works shown here stem from this drive to simplify.  What I see has been affected by that change in approach, though, as you can see there are many other images in our environment which interest me. I am truly a flaneur. Just passing by and shooting what I see.

This sounds very ego driven, doesn’t it? Please accept my apologies if that seems so, that was not intended, but remember; I take pictures to satisfy me. I don’t sell them or publish them, other than on social media.
I don’t profess to be anything other than a person who takes pictures of that which interests me. I’m the complete amateur I suppose. There is no pressure. It is true freedom.

As for “Level 1”?
It’s a good metaphor for where I’m trying to get back to. To a place where I’m unencumbered by artifice. Level 1.

Peter
December 2018
Lincoln UK

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In closing…
At the end of each year, I make a mental list of my mistakes, embarrassing gaffes, faux pas and other ‘general’ cock-ups. and it’s a pretty long list I can tell you.

I know failure in some things is inevitable. I just hope to fail ‘better’ next time. That’s all I can hope for.

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