Photographe

Song story & origins

Introduction

Photographe (literally, “light writing”) is an instrumental composed around 2010–2011 and released on Edge of the Known (2013), then remastered for The Road Behind (2015). It began as a rare commission and ended as a love letter to the way light behaves in and around Spearfish and the Black Hills.

Where the piece came from

For the first time, someone commissioned me to compose: a local photographer (I’m leaving the name out) was building a multimedia project to showcase images—some in time-lapse—and asked if I’d write music to accompany them. The example reels I was shown featured desert landscapes, but this photographer was working and living near Spearfish in the Black Hills, which are famously photogenic in every season. (Pros and tourists alike come here by the thousands to shoot Spearfish Canyon and the surrounding Hills.) I’m a picture-taker myself—these days mostly an iPhone—and I loved the idea of scoring images from the place I live. The piece grew from that invitation.

Music and arrangement

The request was for something orchestral, so I built the track the way I often approach instrumentals:

Start with acoustic guitar establishing the chord progression that runs the full length of the piece.

Add a gentle electric guitar to carry early lead phrases.

Bring in strings and percussion, carefully shaping individual string parts and even thinking about the stereo field—placing lower strings and higher strings so the arrangement opens up like a picture.

All that sets up the climax. I’m a long-time progressive-rock kid, and before the close I wanted a touch of Pink Floyd in the distorted electric guitar—a soaring line that rides the string bed to the end before the whole thing eases back down. Structurally, it follows a pattern I love: lay the bones, build steadily, crest, then settle into a gentle landing.

Title and imagery: “light writing”

When the photographer’s project fell apart on the other side, I still had a finished instrumental without a name. Breaking “photograph” into its roots gave me Photographe—light writing. It fit what the music was reaching for: the way canyon light writes on stone—long shadows, and the reds, oranges, and blues that move across the walls at different hours. The title kept me thinking like a photographer while I mixed—composing with light and space as much as with notes.

A visual companion

Even without the original commission, I eventually cut a music video of my own: an autumn hike in the Hills, shot mostly on an iPhone, edited to the finished track. It’s simple—just the trail and the leaves—but it does what the piece was made to do: let the images breathe while the music carries them.

Why it stays with me

Because it’s the sound of home seen—a score for the everyday miracle of light in Spearfish Canyon. Even after the collaboration evaporated, the music kept the heart of the idea: orchestral strings and electric guitar meeting where the day’s color meets the rock. That’s Photographe: a song that’s really about seeing.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx