Text and photos by McCade Hayes

When I first arrived in Arles, I was not greeted by the sun. Rather, when I stepped off the train and into the small formerly Roman city, it was in the early night. I walked to my hostel, exhausted from the full day of travel and sweaty from carrying all of my belongings split between two backpacks. The walk through the night carried with it a mystique in the shadowy corners of the streets that my mind’s imagination began to fill in.

I came to Arles with the intention of making a first attempt at photography, in hopes that it would help to improve my primary craft, writing. After a conversation with Malcolm Taylor, my housemate and a photographer, I decided to take my photos in black and white. This is because taking photos in this style can help to exemplify the form and lighting of a scene. So in the city of Arles, home of the renowned Les Rencontres photography festival, and day-long amazing natural light, I set out to take photos. Here are some of the results.

This amplification of shadows and the form or silhouettes in my pictures, revealed something that I could apply in my writing craft. I found that by changing the camera exposure to darken the lighting while shooting in black and white, the photo’s tone flipped on its head. In the more exposed photos, the walls feel open and welcoming as the city of Arles actually feels.

In the under-exposed photo, the aesthetics changed to a more gothic and slightly unsettling photo that leaves the viewer feeling almost as though the walls close in around them and brings their eyes more towards the sky, or towards escape.

This idea has led me to a conclusion that light as part of setting should be used and exemplified at points within creative written works as well. For example, when setting a scene I can apply this knowledge by considering where in the setting I decide to place the reader’s point of view with considerations of form included. To expand on what I mean by form, the importance of objects, characters and other concepts in a scene is often dictated by the amount of words or space a description of that thing takes up on the page. This also can be applied in a less figurative way, where I describe the lighting in scenes to convey tone, importance, or meaning to the readers.

I was pushed far outside of my comfort zone in the first few weeks of working in this program. By changing my environment completely, down to the language that I am speaking, and the work that I am producing. I have been able to learn a lot about the common ground of creative writing and photography, especially in regards to establishing setting and tone, lessons that I can continue to practice and learn from even after this program.