Cig Harvey, Three Apricots (Wet), 2023.
Cig Harvey, January Swim, Rockport Harbor, 2023.
Cig Harvey, Scout in the Apple Orchard, Rockport, Maine, 2021.
Cig Harvey, Flowers, When We Have No Words, White Peonies, Vinalhaven, 2025.
Cig Harvey, Apple Tree, Last Light, 2021.
Cig Harvey, Gold Road (Pollen), 2023.
How to Make a Picture
- Begin the ceremony by placing the camera over your head, red strap slashing half an X through your body. You are now a member of the Order of the Eye. Stand to attention. Remember, the camera is a Ouija board. The camera is a closet. The camera is a compass.
- Go in search of light and color. It could be anywhere. Find it outside in the world or construct it on your kitchen table. A sliver of silver light on a cheekbone, the first pink magnolia blossoms glowing alive against the dark of winter, a shaft of sunlight on the curved backbones of green ferns in springtime.
- Find the scene that makes you gasp. Pupils dilate, adrenaline floods, heart rate increases, cortisol releases. The moment recorded in yellow highlighter across the gut.
- Bring the camera to the eye. Twist the dials so the picture matches the correct density for the subject—inky enough, blurry enough, sharp enough—and search for the right angle of light so it mirrors the very thing that made you stop. A camera is a machine that freezes time. But a camera is just a hole and a stopwatch, an expensive pencil. It’s what you have to say that’s important.
- Press the shutter. Blink the eye. Photography deals in a currency of fractions of a second with shutter speeds of 60th, 125th, and 1000th—tiny fragments of time to represent a life’s work.
- Remember: there is no going back, and tomorrow will not be the same. Everything changes.
Cig Harvey, The Spectrum, Rockport, 2024.
Image at top: Cig Harvey, Ferns (Variation #1), Vinalhaven, Maine, 2025.