The Permissive Footpath at Nettleton
Silent path unfolds—
shadows weave through open gates,
ghosts of steps remain.
I saw a post today on Facebook where a photographer was asking others whether his images should be in black and white or colour. He mentioned that someone had attended a workshop by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb. Somewhere in my collection, I have a book they created called Street Photography and the Poetic Image. I must look it out.
The Facebook post made me think about Haiku and Ginko. One of the photographer’s images caught my attention—it depicted a woman standing at the top of some steps, possibly in a railway station, while a man walked away into the distance. They were the only two figures in the image. The scene resonated with me, and I wrote a haiku:
Life Behind, Dawn Ahead
Footsteps fade away—
his dawn breaks on the horizon,
my dusk holds its breath.
Now a photo-haiku, this combination of image and poem is about a loved one leaving for a new chapter in their life—the excitement it brings for them, and the void it creates for the one left behind. The image is filled with a quiet emotional weight, making it a perfect moment to translate into haiku.
As for whether the photographer’s images should be in black and white or colour, I don’t think anyone can give a meaningful answer. They can only tell him what they would do. Writing haiku as a response to an image can help us understand why and how we make photography. It forces us to distill a moment’s essence into a few words, just as a photograph captures it in a frame.
I took the images in this blog post a couple of weeks ago when Shona and I went for a walk around a ‘permissive’ pathway. It is not a public footpath but one the farmer allows the public to walk on. I chose to shoot in black and white.
For me, black and white often brings out the interplay of light and shadow, stripping the image down to its core emotions. It felt like the right choice at that moment. Perhaps the real question is not whether black and white or colour is ‘better,’ but what serves the story we want to tell.
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