October 24, 2025

Morning Light

Autumn reminded me - at just the right time - how much I need photography

It was the second coffee that woke me up. Not to the day but the year I had lost.

I’m writing to you from my office, a box of a room. Only pockets of desk and floor remain visible amongst the clutter.

I last wrote to you a year ago, not long before returning to writing software for work. Thousands of lines of code turned into mortgage payments, supermarket trips, and car repairs. Photography never did that, at least not for me.

My camera has grown comfortable in its bag. My journal reduced to shopping lists and apologies to a former self.

Then autumn came.

Monday. The morning ritual of school run and then coffee and then the glow of my computer screen and then the next coffee and— Except as I walked through the door, light struck my kitchen table. Warm, vibrant autumn light. A pause, then a dash for my camera bag.

A candle stood on the table, caught in a shaft of brilliant morning light. An actor on a stage. My hands fumble with a camera unfamiliar to me, but a clean frame forms after four or five attempts. I keep glancing at the scene as I make my coffee, before inevitably its waft carries me upstairs to work.

Back to my desk. Back to what pays. Back to more code, or emails. I forget. Only an hour before my body again asks for coffee and I oblige. Empty cup in hand, I headed downstairs, where I found the light had changed. Here was my actor, wrapped in a soft gentle light. Gone was the contrast, the rich colours, the focus; replaced with a haze and sense of openness.

One hour. The same stage transformed. A single snick of the shutter this time, the camera coming back to my fingers more readily now.

The kettle boils, waiting for me to stop flicking between these two images on the back of the camera.

The first rich with drama and mood, recalling evenings exploring the pools of light within The Mulberry’s dark interior. Beacons of intensity in the gloom, where conversations, moments of consequence played out to the rhythm of Harry and Jay’s dishes.

The second image light and airy, it was like those summer evenings where the sky and the sea race each other to the horizon, breathing hard enough that it’s unclear where the two meet in the haze.

Back and forth between drama and peace; both mundane, yet absolutely real. Both reminders of work that existed beyond my box of a room.

The kettle grew cold as the camera warmed in my hands. Eventually I returned to the lifeless glow of my monitor without the second cup of coffee. I didn’t need it. There would be more coffee tomorrow, more lines of code to write. There would be morning light. Maybe I’d be there to see it.

— Jamie

P.S. — In the year since I last wrote to you, I haven’t been working on Makers — the photography and writing project I started before life got busy.

This newsletter, newly-named Spring Tide will be my way of beginning that process again: sharing quiet notes about making things slowly, with care.

If you’re still here, thank you for waiting. I’ve missed this.