Being a Long Exposure photographer myself, I cannot but dedicate a reflection to Time. Time is an element in its raw form, and we as human beings cannot fully understand it. One of the perceptions or maybe reality is that time is a human creation, therefore an illusion. We, as long exposure photographers are capturing a slice of this raw element while it is flowing with the long exposure technique. Since we are not able to see the result with our bare eyes, we slow the incoming light to extend the exposure, thus most of our images portray the flowing elements like clouds or water while embracing a static object. The image we produce is the product of the artist’s vision created as an illusion of flowing time. Ultimately, the term ‘Long Exposure’ does not refer to images with exposure exceeding a certain amount of time, just to get the proper light and shadow levels, but to images that have a static ‘subject’ with a secondary flowing element in a period of time. When I started photography in 2011, I was immediately introduced to landscape photography, during the first few years I was considered as a Maltese landscape photographer, a label which I did not endorse comfortably, for fact that I don’t shoot just landscapes. Living on a tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean, where most of the time the landscape is dry, I found myself attracted to what I love most – the seacoast. I spent my childhood by the sea and the coast which I consider my childhood playground. The real challenge is not traveling too far distances to capture images, but shooting in your own backyard and try to find a shot which many other photographers would oversee and discard, I try to make my images unique and personal; it is a struggle to find singled out subjects in Malta, therefore it is difficult to isolate a subject while leaving out the chaos which surrounds it. When my photography was still evolving, I was reading all about the great masters and trying to incorporate my life’s philosophy in the images I produce. I came along with a quote by an Indian writer Amit Kalantri.
Reculver Towers - Herne Bay - United Kingdom
“A photograph shouldn’t be just a picture; it should be a Philosophy”
I want my work to speak about myself, in every image I produce there is my life experience, my beliefs, the books I read, and the music I listen to. I am often asked why I shoot long exposures, usually, my answer would be very simple, I want to capture not just the decisive moment, but stretch time and capture it in a single frame, almost as if the camera becomes a time machine like from the novel by H.G.Wells. We create that illusion where the viewer can transport himself into a dreamy scene, almost like a portal to a parallel universe, a utopia where everything is perfect and as desired.