TO WANDER & WONDER

Unhurried thoughts that circle, and sit. Sometimes they come back to land. More often they stay out at sea. Seagulls and salt air. Storm fronts, and slow tides. The shifting edge between land and water.

10 stories

Latest Stories

VALDA BAILEY

It's the Atlantic, you know...

The Med is too sociable. The Caribbean is just a little bit too pleased with itself. The English Channel can be a bit sullen. And the Sargasso Sea is frankly weird. No. It has to be the Atlantic.

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Me and my Knotty Pated Fool

I've spent far more time than is probably healthy trying to understand what a large language model actually is. Not how to use it – that part is easy enough – but what sort of thing it is. I will happily admit I wouldn't be without it. In recent months, it has helped me decipher lengthy legal documents, understand Portuguese tax laws, negotiate my way through a largely incomprehensible tax portal, push back in reasonably fluent Portuguese on a pitifully inadequate insurance offer, and handle do

VALDA BAILEY

Drawing in the Dark

In 1954 Cy Twombly spent his weekends in a dark hotel room, degrading a line he had spent years learning to make. Shiraga threw the brushes away because his hands were too trained. A question for photographers whose camera movement has gone smooth: rut, or signature?

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The Indecisive Moment

Never finished. Only trusted. Here's a story about Pierre Bonnard – it may be apocryphal, but I like to think not. He supposedly slipped a small box of paints into the Louvre, persuaded a friend to distract the guard, and disappeared to retouch one of his own paintings while it hung on the wall – a finished painting hanging in the Louvre, if you please! It would be good enough for most of us. Except Bonnard thought otherwise. I've already talked about how much time I've wasted on the Studio At

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Beyond the Shutter

The single frame was never the point. New York, 2011. A hungry gathering of students after a gruelling day trying to unite light, colour and gesture into something that might earn an approving grunt from Jay Maisel. Ten of us round a table, mostly professional photographers. I had advanced since my first workshop with Jay, but I was still every inch a pretender, still in thrall to Flickr, where everything is a 'great capture!!!' and the likes get doled out like jelly beans. An instant sugar rus

VALDA BAILEY

Someone was Here

I care enormously about how things look. Design matters to me. Individuality, avoiding cookie-cutter perfection. The crisp white modernism of our age is something I struggle with. Nevertheless, for years I followed the usual advice about photographers’ websites. Keep the background white, or, if you want to be a little bit adventurous, grey; keep the type small and the personality elsewhere. Nothing must interfere with the photographs. The work is the thing, and it should speak for itself. So t

VALDA BAILEY

What's in a Name?

Why we chose Pedra do Ouro over the Algarve, the awkward language of expats and immigrants, and the appeal of a less polished life on Portugal’s Silver Coast.

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Costa de Prata

Not silver as in jewellery – silver as a condition of the light. On the pewter, pink and inky moods of Portugal's Atlantic light, and starting again in a roofless studio.