There was no time.
No time to zone in, to tone gently. No time to sit with an image, to wonder where it might lead. The usual rituals—fussing with layout, lingering in edits, pausing to feel rather than press forward—they were absent. Each decision became binary: make it, move on.
Work commitments pushed the shooting window late into the month. I hit week three and realized I wasn’t halfway. That quiet voice—you’re not going to finish—grew louder. The final week became a chase, not a conversation. I wasn’t seeing. I was hunting. And hunting kills the joy of being in place.
I had to shake it off.
The guillotine arrived in week three. So did the trimmer. Paper decisions were still hovering, unmade. The layout came together in the final days. Editing? Far too rushed. Lessons landed hard and fast. But they landed. And that makes the entire exercise—messy, flawed, beautiful—worth it.
Next time won’t be easier. But it will be clearer. I’ll have a thing in my hands, something to point to when someone asks, “So, what do you photograph?”
This month of images has been one of the most rewarding I’ve had.
Without SoFoBoMo, none of these photographs would exist. Some will fade. But a few—maybe only a few—will stay with me for years.
This project is dedicated to Ben Lifson, who helped me learn how to see.
I chose a subject close to home. Out of necessity, yes, but also intuition. Balcombe Heights—a five-minute ride away. Sixteen hectares of buildings from another era, built in 1922 as a school and now quietly reinhabited. Community radio, pottery, early childhood services, Horticultural Services, autism support, toy libraries, SES. Each space now shaped by new hands and new purposes.
The bones of the buildings remain consistent—symmetry in their design, repetition in their materials—but the details reveal the passage of time. One window draped in delicate curtain fabric. Another secured behind wire mesh. A door layered with decades of paint. Another patched in galvanized steel. The plumbing is a map of need: different fixes, different plumbers, different years.
None of it planned. All of it lived.
And maybe that’s the point. These weren’t buildings that resisted change. They absorbed it. Quietly, practically. That’s what made them worth photographing. Not because they were beautiful, but because they were becoming.
Just like this project.
