The Power of Mindful Photography: My Journey

This photo below is my Dad, he is squeezed in between the hedge and the garage and I distinctly remember the moment I took this picture on my Zenith SLR camera. Below you will see the house where I grew up. It is in Hawick in the Scottish Borders. I was a very quiet child and didn’t socialise much. I found primary school really challenging and struggled to make friends. I was always looking for that one like-minded person. I had two teachers who really understood me and so for two years, I felt a little more comfortable and getting up in the morning didn’t seem such a scary and unpredictable concept.

My best friend attended a nearby school, I desperately wanted to move but I don’t think I could find the words to communicate this to my parents, also, I don’t think I realised it was a viable option.

One of my main interests was photography. My Dad gave me his Zenit camera at the age of 8. He showed me the principles and I loved to move the apertures on the lens, I think there were only a few aperture settings (f-stops) to choose from and it was scientific, there was reasoning, there was a cause and effect and this made sense to me. To put it a little clearer, I was in control.

This is the photo I took around 9 years old after we had developed it together in the darkroom. The darkroom was our only bathroom and whilst we were in there working with towels blocking out all the chinks of light, I remember my mum and sister asking when we were finished as they needed ‘to go’!   I love this image as I can see my bedroom window but I can also picture the people who lived around us, many have now passed away.

One dear friend and person of influence died quite recently, he was called Stuart. He was an artist and woodturner with an active interest in archaeology and local hillforts. He was quite a bit older than me and therefore always seemed so incredibly tall. His nickname was Curly and I just thought he was the coolest punk in town. He would wear skinny drainpipe jeans and had his hair cut mohican-style.

In a way he was a maybe a mini role model as I remember thinking as I walked passed his house to school, “Rebecca, be more Stuart!”  By the time I reached my teenage years, I was a little more Stuart, I became a goth and tried to dye my blonde hair black. I was kicking back and exploring my identity and photography was a big part of this. Wherever I went, I had my camera and when things felt like they were running away with me, I always had my viewfinder to look through ………. and breathe.

So this was the beginning. This was the start of therapeutic and mindful photography for me. This was when I realised that when looking through the viewfinder, I could literally focus on the things that made me happy and life just seemed that little bit more manageable.