PIXIPORT-The Eye Within Creative Art Writer Reviewer Simon Maxwell: "Proviso - the articles in the Eye Within series represent my personal quest, and that alone. I?ve found that photography can be used as a tool to develop a state of contemplation and through that it enables me to hone my powers of perception and eventually lead to creative image making; this is my path. The beauty of Pixiport is that there are so many artists to observe who are treading their own paths. I invite you to take my small offering and add it to your ongoing journey....

Finding the Light
I was once invited by a painter to visit his studio and then have a meal at his house with a friend of his. It was mid summer and the daylight seemed to linger a long time. It got to about 11pm and I noticed that Richard hadn?t turned on any of the room lights; there were no candles either. Our eyes became accustomed to the low level of light. Richard kept breaking off mid-conversation to draw our attention to a particular area of light or shade. He clearly found light fascinating. Back in his studio earlier he had shown me a collection of stones that he had placed on a sheet of white paper on his window sill. He lifted one up and I could see that the sunlight had actually visibly yellowed the area around the stone while the paper beneath it remained a crisp white. He explained that he had been interested in using the sun itself as a painting tool. In the back of my mind I thought: ?This is photography in its purest sense?.
I started to look a lot more intently at light that evening. Richard showed us the extent to which the low light managed to illuminate the walls of his flat, how despite its indirect source, the narrow rectangle of a small window produced a harder lighting effect which revealed texture better than the larger window in the main room. He showed us areas of shade which nonetheless contained a luminosity "