I have recently spent a short time-out in the Trossachs - Scotlands National Park, situated just above Glasgow - where I hit upon a mini-revelation regarding what I have been photographing and why I have been taking photographs.

You see, I have been quite happy to snap away with my low-quality digital camera, without concerning myself with why I am taking the photographs.  Previously this act has always been related to my painting, I have concentrated on taking shots of scenes or objects that I intended to use in my painting.  With hindsight I can see that I made a significant change during a recent trip to Amsterdam, here it was where I actively begun to take photographs on a whim, snap snap snap, and what a freedom it gave me! Not always thinking what could be used in my ‘real’ work, and instead taking a shot because of the merits of the photograph alone.  Pre-thought has been overtaken by instinct and other mini-revelations have occurred to me because of this, such as taking photographs of water, because I like the abstract qualities you are given when there is no other material to reference against, the play of light upon and within a surface that at one instance reflects the light and at the next, allows the lens to view deep under its surface.  The particular limitations of the camera seem to add to this contradictory outcome; firstly a camera is never able to process enough of the experience to relate it to what minds-eye has remembered of the event, such as the sounds and smells that bombard your senses and affect the memory, secondly, the camera captures an instant in stasis, not the constantly shifting play of light across the surface that is the reality of the experience.

Only when I visited Scotland did I realise the reasoning behind this change in direction.  And it related to something I read a long time ago, so long ago I can’t remember who wrote it, but it goes something along the lines of “photography is the great democratising medium, because it allows untrained amateurs and people without the talent required to compose an image, to capture a beautiful picture, a perfect scene.  The most beautiful elements of amateur photography are the chance happenings, the accidents, that are captured in its instantaneous gaze and cannot be captured in the laborious and time-consuming practise of painting without an act-of-will of the artist.”

I can see now, photography for the medium that it is designed to be. A documentation to show the immediate results of a mind in action, to capture instantaneously those things that interest you.  By then being captured, they are dislocated from the activity of the mind somewhat, and distorted by the mechanics of the camera and photographic medium.  The resultant alteration from the original intent doesn’t interest me so much in trying to find a happy communion between the two, but I am satisfied that once it is placed in photographic form it becomes something else.  I am more interested in maintaining the aesthetic of amateurism and helping to navigate myself through the documentary process.

Please help.

The black dog is yapping at the door to my sleeping bag, and he won’t go away.

You must know what this feels like, lest you forget the rambling man in gin-sodden overalls that would tap-tap-tap on the mirror of my tutu, late at night, begging for harmony.

I could never offer harmony, only my perpetual freehand.  My pneumatic drill of a hand, with rampant energy and an overture of half-baked desires.  You’d take it up anyway, even though you knew it would leave you feeling lemony-fresh.

Well, my perpetual freehand is perpetually free again. Twitching.

If only I could ram a screw into it, pin it to a piece of wood, but I hear this has been done by another fairly recently and a fat lot of good it did him.  My other hand is pretty useless anyway, doesn’t have a poker face, would never get it in in-time.

Yapping in the alley and kicking bins over in frustration, red eyes bulging and a permafrost clinging to its huge hanging balls.  Disdainful creature.  Black dog, back-yard dog. It doesn’t just wait, but revels in the constancy of madness.  Once your mad, your always mad.  You can try the glove on, to see if it fits and then you find its a chinese puzzle, the more you pull the tighter it gets.

I wish my hand was permafrost but its always hot. My red right hand. My filtching, feltching godhand.  Hurling thunderbolts into the arses of well composed daydreams.

I’ll wail into the bag and wait to see if I answer.  That way I’ll know if it’s real or not.

I haven’t done a lot today, but then, I haven’t done a lot wrong. So in that respect, it hasn’t been a bad day.

Tom de Freston- diary entry

I purchased a  tube of Acrylic Vermillion today, having fallen in love with a tiny tube of Goache Vermillion that I had in a multiset. Its like Cadmium red, but better. Its got such a vibrant, luminous glow. It seems to have a particular potency when applied reasonably thinly, so that the light can work its way through. I can only imagine how sublime Michael Hardings ‘Chinese Vermillion- oil’ must be. Its bloody £80 for a small pot.

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