“I want to be big!” analog photo session with Maria-Anna
Maria-Anna takes me to the Chisley Stones on Staups Moor, having been pulled there herself a few months ago, from her window all the way in Old Town, intrigued by the distant bands of colour.
The autumn light is intense and I feel excited. Relieved by the lack of rain for today. I have to keep interrupting our conversation to say wow or “please can you stand in the road!?” when I can’t ignore how things look against the sky.
I love the feeling of being shown new pathways as well, someone sharing a special place with me. There’s a walk I often do nearby and to be connecting where Maria-Anna is taking me with those routes, makes my mind big and happy.
She finds the landscape around the disused quarry both beautiful and frightening and we agree that this is a rich, muddy starting point for our session.
Up on the moor, we enjoy the dusty, purple expanse created by the heather and this being heightened by noticing that it comes from the dried branches – it isn’t even flowering! The individual plants look grey until we zoom out and see them acting with each other and the light. These sentences from Annihilation, that I had to pause and savour recently, come to mind:
“I took samples as we went, but halfheartedly. All of these tiny remnants I was stuffing into glass tubes with tweezers… what would they tell me? Not much, I felt. Sometimes you get a sense of when the truth of things will not be revealed by microscopes.”
– from Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
With eyes and fingers we get up close to the moss, bedstraw and mushrooms. Rub at the glinting crystal grains in the rocks, then stand back to be in the presence of their grounding, heavy hugeness.
Maria-Anna tells me about unsettledness and pressures she’s putting on herself, feelings that are hard to pin down. There are things glowing and ripening and causing concern. “I want to be big!” she says, stretching out and moving her arms. Having often noticed the way she naturally stands with her hands on her hips, talks and gestures with electrifying expressiveness, “you already are” I think to myself.
In the evening, I finish a meal and receive a gladdening message: “Made it home in the last of the light! Now my mind is abuzz with possibilities of what’s there in the photos, and partly still roaming the rocks and the hills.. I can feel it in me how good it was to do that work/(play?) with you 💕 Thank you!!” which feels especially significant as she was a little low when we first met at the bus stop.
My mind is buzzing too. Having plenty of light up on the moors helped me to work confidently and flow. The intentionality, forward planning and sense that we were experimenting and exploring together, felt vital.
Technical Details
Camera: Canon EOS 1000F
a present from my aunt & uncle, my trusty companion for years already
Lens: Tamron SP 34-135mm, F/3.5-5.6, aspherical zoom
Film: Kodak Porta 800 35mm, 36 exp.
Dev & Scan: Photo Express, Hull
Interested in an analog photo session? Find out more here or send me an email or Instagram DM with any queries. Please note that the free and introductory rate slots have been spoken for now.
