WHEN the light gets in: Seaglass + sunlight

From an afternoon of playing with seaglass, sunlight and shadows

Sunlight is my favorite collaborator. When I first began to experiment with seaglass photography, I quickly became enchanted by how light, glass and color together create an image unique to a moment. Ephemeral. Shadows change with imperceptible shifts of the sun. Colors reflect, throw prisms, dance and fade as the light changes throughout the day. Subtle marks and textures may appear sculptural in the morning, invisible in a harder afternoon light.

My work is now about chasing and capturing these fleeting compositions.

Every piece of seaglass I pick up has spent decades tumbling in salt water, smashing against sand and rocks, shaped and scarred by the immense forces of nature. Some pieces lose all traces of what they were. Others carry clues: bubbles that point to antiquity, a shape that signals purpose, words or letters that can be traced to a manufacturer. But it's not the origin stories that interest me so much as the narrative of change: the way time works on a surface. Clear, bright color clouds to translucence, hues shift, sharp edges are smoothed.

When light moves through those altered surfaces, the results change by the hour, the season, the angle of a winter afternoon versus a summer one. I've photographed the same composition in stark morning sunlight and then again at twilight – clear and bright to golden, perhaps. Lit from beneath, as with a lightbox, seaglass glows; from above it reveals texture. Sunlight streaming through overlapping pieces adds dimension and depth; glass lit from the side sculpts shadow. Some light sources infuse radiance or throw off reflected color, while others flatten and diminish the character of the glass.

My art is not only about the curation and arrangement of seaglass, but also the accident of alignment — material and light and attention arriving together in a particular moment that will only happen this way this once. The reflections, layers and shadows form their own compositions. The broken, discarded pieces have become beautiful in an entirely different way.

Seaglass is a lovely metaphor for transformation. Time leaves marks. Pressure changes us. Sharpness can, eventually, soften. In the right light, in the right moment, viewed with curiosity and appreciation, weathering brings a new kind of loveliness.