SF Said's Photography

Photography is my favourite hobby.  I love it because it doesn't involve words.  When you spend every day writing words, it's nice to get away from them sometimes!  And pictures can still tell a story.  Photography has helped me see so many strange and interesting things; things I would never have noticed otherwise.

I enjoy prowling around city streets at night with my camera, trying to see things from different points of view.  Sometimes I imagine them from a street cat's point of view, as if I was Varjak Paw, or one of his friends.  What would the city really look like to them?

This has led me into some strange places.  I can find myself staring for ages at puddles, or reflections of neon lights on a rainy pavement.  I spend whole evenings standing on precarious bridges over motorways, watching the light trails from traffic sparkling in the night.

I've even been down sewers to see what it really looks like there.  (And smells like.)  If you've read The Outlaw Varjak Paw, you might recognise this view:

I like to justify my photography by claiming that it's part of my research; it influences the way I imagine and describe scenes.  My new book, PHOENIX (coming in summer 2013), would definitely not be the same without it.  This book is not about Varjak Paw, or even cats; it's about people this time, and also aliens, because it's a science fiction epic set in outer space.  It begins with the stars singing to the main character.  I think that might look something like this:

By the way, if you like these photographs, some of them are published in a beautiful little book called London's Lost Rivers.  It's a guide to the hidden, secret rivers that flow underneath the city; rivers most people have never seen.  I didn't write any of the words... but there are 18 of my pictures in the book.

Research: Catwatching

Another thing I'll be doing in this blog is sharing some of my research with you.  So here's a book that helped me write Varjak Paw: Catwatching, by Desmond Morris.

It was very important to me that the cats in Varjak should be as much like real cats as possible.  So I did a lot of research into cat behaviour and body language, and of all the books I read (there were many!), this one was the most helpful:

Morris really gives you a sense of what it must be like to be a cat, and to experience the world through a cat's senses - most of them much sharper than human senses.  For example, he tells us:

"Humans in the prime of life can hear noises up to about 20,000 cycles per second.  Dogs can manage up to about 35,000 to 40,000 cycles per second, so that they are able to detect sounds that we cannot.  Cats, on the other hand, can hear sounds up to an astonishing 100,000 cycles per second...  This acoustic ability explains why cats sometimes appear to have supernatural powers.  They hear and understand the ultrasonic sounds that precede a noisy activity and respond appropriately before we have even realized that something unusual is going to happen."

The book is packed with this kind of information; Morris answers almost every question you could have about cats, sometimes very surprisingly.  If you enjoyed Varjak Paw, I can highly recommend it!