I am seeing boundaries and lines everywhere. In Australia, the state borders have been closed and they are thinking of apportioning states in counties or shires, so that you cannot travel beyond them. Here in the UK, we are trapped in the boundaries not only of this small island, but along village lines where people with nothing better to do twitch curtains and note whether you're in the regulation pair and whether you've had your one walk a day. We could transgress shire lines, but only with a well prepared excuse - that we are moving house, or visiting a vulnerable relative. For now, we dare not risk it. The flight paths we raced along from India are no more, and flights are grounded. Now, the lines I follow are local ordinance survey maps, marked with hills and tussocks.

To avoid feeling overly cloistered, into the landscape of my mind I go, and wonder what I can do there.

I have signed up for an online photography course and am going back to the very basics. It's a way to communicated with my sister and my father who are both into photography, and to advance a little instead of just trusting the auto function to do all the work. I promise myself to learn slowly and thus cement this new skill firmly. If I can come out of lockdown with a new skill, then it is not a wasted journey.

And so gridlines it is. I have always been aware of the rule of thirds, but still, I've never been entirely happy with my composition. A bit of a shameful penny dropped whilst watching the first few videos of the course today - it's not just the lines themselves, but the intersection of gridlines where objects can be placed. Suddenly, my entire landscape opened up. The same landscape. The same path. But I was seeing it a little differently.

And thus, whilst my photos need much work, and are still very, very amateur, I am happy with the photos I took today. So enthused am I that I've also downloaded Capture One, a software program akin to Lightroom, so I can do some post production too. Step one is just getting composition right. I'm also in a online group with Dad and my sister where we share our photos for feedback. It's a nice thing to connect the family from afar.

So if I'm not out walking the lines of this locked down landscape, seeing gridlines in a new way, I'm fiddling with a new program inside, by a sunny window with a glorious view over spring fields.

I realise it's not the lines themselves that are impositions - it's the freedom of where to place subjects within these lines. Similarly, the borders and boundaries might be physically restrictive, but it's how I move myself within these boundaries that is going to make for a much better picture when I look back in years to come.

With Love,

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