I took this photograph while standing still on a stone path in Loreto Bay, my body paused mid-step. The camera pointed downward, following my gaze. The ground beneath me was uneven, held together by pale mortar and dark stone, each piece shaped by time, weather, and repeated passage. I felt the texture through the soles of my feet before I ever raised the camera.

My feet appear at the lower edge of the frame. They are present without taking over the image. I did not move them into position. I let them remain where they were. The photograph records that moment of pause, when motion softened into attention.

What I brought to this image was care and restraint. I chose black and white to quiet colour and allow surface and tone to speak. I stayed close to the ground, attending to what was underfoot rather than reaching toward a view. I let the stones remain fractured and imperfect. Light falls evenly across the surface, revealing wear rather than drama. Shadow is subtle here, working quietly as a measure of depth and contact.

This way of seeing grows from artists who work with land through patience and ethical distance, including Mark Ruwedel, Awoiska van der Molen, and Jem Southam. Their practices taught me to value duration over capture and presence over performance. It also connects to ways of understanding place as something learned through the body, through standing, walking, returning, and waiting.

I took this photograph because Loreto Bay has been asking me to slow down. Much of my work engages with landscapes marked by aftermath and loss. Here, the lesson was gentler. The land did not call for interpretation or explanation. It asked me to stay, to feel where I was standing, and to notice what remained after many others had passed through.

This image carries motion held in place. It holds the moment when walking becomes witnessing, and when learning comes from standing long enough to feel the ground beneath the heart.

Working in black and white allows me to attend to surface, texture, and tone without distraction. The image holds a moment when movement softened into attention. Loreto Bay has been teaching me to slow down, to learn from what is underfoot, and to notice what remains after many passages. This photograph holds that lesson, grounded in place and carried through the body.