The origin of my romance with natural light photography was not born from dogma or aesthetic evangelism, but necessity—a primal, pragmatic choice rendered from scarcity. Like many photographic neophytes, I began not with a meticulously curated gear collection, but with what was within reach: a bruised and weathered film camera, its leather casing frayed with use, and a kaleidoscope of daylight that cascaded unbidden through the windows of my meager, plant-littered apartment.
There was a quiet majesty to that illumination, as though the sun itself whispered stories through gauzy curtains. It painted still lifes across my hardwood floor, lent gravitas to the mundane, and cast halos around my subjects with celestial indifference. I wasn’t chasing an aesthetic; I was groping in the dark for emotional resonance, and the light—free, mercurial, and unscripted was the first thing that offered me a vocabulary.
Light as a Language of Emotion
Unlike strobes or constant lighting setups with their technical choreography and metronomic consistency, daylight spoke in riddles. It shifted, danced, and withdrew. It challenged my patience and rewarded my reverence. I began to see it not merely as illumination, but as narrative scaffolding—a way to underscore intimacy, longing, even melancholia. Window light offered drama without demand. Overcast skies softened my anxieties, diffused my ignorance, and wrapped my portraits in what felt like truth.
In retrospect, it’s almost laughable how unaware I was of the ideological trenches in the photography world—those who swore allegiance to natural light and those who mastered artificial illumination with military precision. I wandered obliviously between them, tethered not to principle but to instinct. I loved daylight for its unpredictability and its emotional elasticity. It sculpted faces without overstepping. It revealed, but never imposed.
When Magic Becomes Mayhem
But here’s the cruel poetry of it: the same light I revered often betrayed me. Sessions were abandoned due to sudden cloudbursts. Faces fell into unintended shadow. Eyes dulled. There were days I stalked golden hour like a pilgrim, only to be met with steel-gray skies and disappointment that bordered on grief.
This unruly muse—I chased it with a feverish devotion, my tripod a kind of altar. I learned its habits, its tantrums, its subtle shifts. I memorized how the morning sun would slant across my west-facing room at 8:17 AM and how it vanished behind the apartment block at 3:46 PM. My calendar revolved not around events, but the theatrical movements of light. And still, there were surprises. There were losses.
Was it beautiful? Undeniably. Was it sustainable? Not even remotely.
The Myth of Authenticity
The longer I relied on natural light, the more I began to mythologize it. I told myself it was about honesty, about preserving the unpolished, about resisting the sterile perfectionism of studio work. But in truth, it was a fortress built from my technical insecurity. I didn’t understand manual exposure. I avoided off-camera flash like it was heresy. Shadows intimidated me. So I romanticized my limitations until they masqueraded as artistic choices.
This kind of self-deception is seductive. It feels noble to suffer for your craft. It feels virtuous to rely on the elements. But art is not martyrdom, and restraint without intention becomes stagnation.
I realized, slowly and uncomfortably, that I had shackled my evolution. By insisting on one type of light, I had allowed circumstance to dictate my style rather than choice. I was not in command—I was at the mercy.
The Emotional Spectrum of Light
Daylight does possess a certain dramaturgy. It can swathe a scene in nostalgia or electrify it with drama. But it is not inherently superior to other light sources. The belief that natural equals authentic is a fallacy, and one that continues to haunt even experienced artists.
What matters is control. What matters is fluency. To wield light—not merely follow it—is to open up a symphony of possibilities. Natural light offers mood, but so can a single well-placed LED or a modified speedlight. The key lies in understanding how to evoke, not just expose. When I started exploring mixed lighting and intentional shadows, my visual language expanded. My confidence surged. I was no longer hoping the sun would cooperate—I was engineering my weather.
Romancing the Sun—Without Monogamy
Still, I hold an abiding affection for natural light. It is my first love, after all, and I return to it often like an old melody. But now, I use it deliberately—not out of fear, but from choice. I understand its strengths and its shortcomings. I know how to augment it, how to tame it, how to abandon it when needed.
There is nothing more transcendent than a child’s profile lit by an amber dusk, or a tear-streaked cheek caught in diffuse afternoon glow. But there is also power in the deliberate hardness of rim light, in the sculptural drama of Rembrandt lighting, in the crisp isolation of a backlit silhouette against a strobe-soaked backdrop. Each light is a dialect, and I’ve grown fond of multilingualism.
Why We Fall in Love with the Fleeting
What drew me to natural light wasn’t just its beauty—it was its impermanence. There is something profoundly human about trying to freeze what won’t stay still. Light, like memory, is always slipping through our fingers. Every frame taken under natural light feels like proof that a moment happened, even as it fades into the recesses of recollection.
It’s a compulsion as old as storytelling itself—to make transient things linger. And that’s what photography has always been for me: a desperate, lyrical plea to preserve feeling. Light, natural or otherwise, is simply the medium through which that plea is translated.
When to Let Go and When to Hold On
Eventually, we all face a reckoning: do we serve our tools, or do our tools serve us? I had to confront the uncomfortable truth that I had let natural light become not just a method, but a master. My growth was stunted by devotion to a single modality. Once I admitted this, once I freed myself from the illusion of “purity,” I began to discover what it truly meant to shape light rather than chase it.
I began experimenting with bounce cards and reflectors, then with portable light sources, learning to mimic that soft window glow even at midnight in a windowless room. I learned that artificial light, when used with care, can feel just as intimate as daylight. Shadows became tools of storytelling, not enemies of exposure.
A Reimagined Relationship
My relationship with light has matured. No longer a desperate crush, it has become a respectful collaboration. I no longer wait with baited breath for the sun to offer permission. I create conditions for beauty, on my terms. Sometimes that means using the sun. Sometimes it means blocking it out entirely.
But always, it means choosing intentionally.
The allure of natural light will never fade for me. There will always be days when I find myself spellbound by the way it grazes a face or turns dust motes into glittering constellations. But I no longer mistake that allure for obligation.
I choose light, now. All of it. The hard, the soft, the messy, and the controlled. I wield it like a brush, and my images are no longer prayers—they are declarations.
Through the Veil of Limitation
The transformation was never thunderous. No lightning-struck moment declared, “Now you evolve.” Rather, it crept in—like dew seeping into the edges of perception. The signal was not a grand revelation, but an insistent repetition: the imagined photograph that never quite materialized. Those unsatisfied renderings began to weigh heavier than failure—they were ghost images, hovering behind every frame.
There is one particular memory that haunts and teaches in equal measure. A child clothed in lavender linen danced in a field stippled with wild phlox, her limbs caught in the ecstasy of spring’s thaw. I had anticipated something ethereal, almost storybook. But nature, faithful to no artist’s whims, conspired otherwise. Clouds gathered, the luminous softness dulled, and I found myself chasing light as if it were a receding train. The photograph in my mind’s eye—graceful, romantic, aglow—evaporated into flatness.
It wasn’t a technical failure. It wasn’t even poor composition. It was simply that light had abandoned me.
The Myth of Natural Light’s Supremacy
Natural light, revered as pure and organic, had become my beautiful captor. I adored its variations—the way a sunrise could infuse everything with gold, how dusk could wrap a subject in velvet shadow. But I began to see the constraints wrapped in its elegance.
The chase after perfect timing, golden hour windows, and cooperative weather felt increasingly like gambling. Would the heavens cooperate? Could I summon radiance on command? This wasn’t artistry; it was roulette.
And so began the undoing of a belief I hadn’t realized I clung to—that artificiality meant inauthenticity. That to control light was to betray spontaneity. Yet what is photography, if not composed spontaneity? We sculpt reality. Why then was I letting a passing cloud dictate the emotional tenor of my frame?
The Reluctant Dance with Artificiality
The transition wasn’t gallant. It started with suspicion and a deep-rooted aesthetic disdain. I associated artificial light with clumsiness, those dreaded built-in flashes that scorched faces into ghostly masks. I feared that learning off-camera techniques would drown me in jargon and complicated gear. I felt like a painter reluctantly swapping watercolors for oils.
But underneath the hesitation lived desire. Not to mimic, not to replicate, but to conjure. I didn’t want to document a scene—I wanted to craft a visual sonnet. I needed light that obeyed my hands, not the whims of the weather. I wanted to wield it like an instrument, not worship it like an idol.
So I began, slowly and awkwardly, like a violinist relearning scales.
Learning the Language of Light
I became a disciple of illumination. I studied not tutorials, but light itself—its falloff, its directionality, its subtleties. I watched how it bent around cheekbones, how it whispered on a brow, how it retreated behind a jawline. I realized light isn’t simply brightness; it’s narrative.
Reflectors became my first tool, not for the sake of brightness, but to fold light gently where I needed it. I discovered bounce, the way a white wall could become a secondary sun. I added a speedlight not as a weapon, but as an echo. I began to understand that modifiers were not accessories—they were sculptors.
The first time I softened a flash through a translucent umbrella and saw shadows dance tenderly across a newborn’s face, I knew I had glimpsed another dimension of artistry. It wasn’t about overpowering light. It was about tempering it, calming its wildness into a poetic hush.
Alchemy in a Softbox
The pivotal moment arrived not during some grand occasion but in the humdrum quiet of a maternity session. We were indoors, the kind of day that mutes every windowpane. My subject sat near a bed draped in neutral linens, her hands gently folded over her rounding belly. I set up a single softbox, angled just slightly to mimic the low slant of winter sun.
The image that emerged was bathed in such exquisite ambiguity that even I had to double-take. Was this glow the doing of the sun or circuitry? The answer mattered less than the result: intimacy. A glowing hush. A visual lullaby.
That was when I understood: artificial light need not scream. It can whisper, sigh, and console. It is not the enemy of authenticity, but its co-conspirator. And in that soft, unwavering illumination, the boundary between what is real and what is crafted blurred entirely.
Emotion Over Execution
Photography, at its marrow, is not about gear or even technique. It is about emotional transmission. A well-lit photograph that fails to evoke feeling is just decoration. But when the apparatus serves the sentiment, it disappears entirely. What remains is mood, resonance, a held breath.
I no longer felt like I was abandoning spontaneity by using tools. Instead, I felt liberated. I could now replicate moods instead of merely hoping to encounter them. I could shoot tenderness at noon, melancholy at dusk, reverence in a basement. The tools became my dialect, not my detour.
From Confinement to Command
With this awakening came something unexpected—confidence. Not the cocky kind that barks orders, but the quiet confidence that grows from knowing you can adapt. If the clouds rolled in, I didn’t panic. If the sun disappeared mid-shoot, I didn’t scramble. I had options. I had fluency.
Light no longer dictated my creativity; it collaborated with it.
What once felt like betrayal—replacing the organic with the engineered—now felt like expansion. I hadn’t lost artistry. I had deepened it. I had moved from being a passive observer to an active conductor. From reacting to shaping. From chasing moments to invoking them.
Harnessing Light as Muse, Not Master
Today, my kit is more modest than technical blogs might suggest. A single softbox, a reflector, and a remote trigger. But what has grown is not my inventory—it’s my intimacy with light. I’ve learned when to let it spill and when to contain it, when to flood and when to feather. I no longer fear its absence. I can summon it.
Even so, I haven’t forsaken natural light. On the contrary, I honor it more fully now, because I am no longer chained to it. Its beauty feels like a gift, not a requirement. I use it when it serves the vision, not simply because it’s there.
Illumination as Liberation
This journey—quiet, incremental, deeply internal—has done more than improve my imagery. It has shifted my posture as an artist. I no longer walk into sessions wondering what light I’ll be granted. I walk in asking what story I want to tell, and then I orchestrate accordingly.
The veil of limitation lifted not with equipment but with understanding. And with understanding came freedom. Not freedom from rules, but the freedom to bend them without breaking the soul of the image.
Light, Unbound
The art of wielding light—whether borrowed from the sky or summoned from a bulb—is not about control. It’s about communion. A silent pact between the creator and the created. When done with intention, light becomes less a necessity and more a character. It amplifies emotion. It breathes nuance. It makes visible what otherwise remains hidden.
That is the gift of evolution—not just more tools, but deeper insight.
Photography has never been about the tools we use. It’s about how we translate what we feel into what others can see. And when we master the many languages of light, we become not just photographers, but storytellers of shadow and shine.
Bridging the Gap Between Vision and Execution
The metamorphosis from a rigid, natural-light devotee to a malleable visual auteur was neither swift nor linear. It was an odyssey paved with luminous misfires and chiaroscuro catastrophes. Images were frequently obliterated by radiance, their tonal subtleties vanishing into an unintentional glow. Eyes glistened not with emotion, but with misplaced catchlights. Harsh shadows dissected faces with surgical precision. It was messy, infuriating, and entirely indispensable.
Failure became a crucible, forging understanding in ways no manual ever could. The sterile confidence of technical instruction paled in comparison to the messy, tactile knowledge extracted from ruinous sessions. I came to understand that true mastery of light transcends diagrams and histograms; it emerges when instinct and control coalesce.
The Question That Haunted the Threshold
During those uncertain beginnings, I found myself haunted by a singular inquiry: Why did I wait so long to evolve? It wasn’t trepidation about complexity, nor a resistance to change. The truth was far more elusive—I was in pursuit of a certain emotional register. My intent wasn’t to perfect exposure, but to render an atmosphere steeped in quietude. I wanted photographs that didn’t shout their technical prowess, but hummed with humanity.
What I sought was light as mood, not spectacle. And therein lay the paradox. I had conflated purity with limitation. Natural light had its poetry, yes—but it also had boundaries I was unwilling to challenge for far too long. The real breakthrough wasn’t in learning to use artificial light; it was in unlearning my dogma around what “authenticity” meant in visual storytelling.
The Art of Reconciliation: Natural and Artificial Light
The solution wasn’t a rejection but a reconciliation. I began to explore how artificial sources could be coerced, even seduced, into behaving like the sun. Not just in color temperature or diffusion, but in temperament. I experimented with modifiers that feathered the beam until it kissed the subject with the gentleness of twilight. I layered gels and reflectors, not for theatricality, but for nuance.
Techniques like bounce lighting and scrim diffusion replaced brute force with nuance. I fell in love with rim lighting that caressed rather than carved, with ambient fill that barely whispered its presence. My images began to evoke rather than impress. They lingered.
What emerged from this exploration was a hybrid method—a language of light that retained the serendipity of natural conditions while embracing the control of artificial illumination. It was not mimicry; it was transformation.
The Evolution of Composition Through Light Sovereignty
As my confidence with lighting deepened, so too did my compositional bravery. Once shackled to the perimeter of north-facing windows or the narrow margins of golden hour, I found myself liberated. No longer dependent on the sun’s mood, I was free to pursue imagery built around story rather than circumstance.
Scenes became denser, more layered. Shadows were no longer feared but welcomed as narrative tools. Intentional underexposure gave rise to a sense of mystery. Light became less a means of visibility and more a medium of emotion. It could illuminate joy or obscure sorrow. It could isolate or unite.
This shift unshackled my creative process from predictability. I could now shoot in a pitch-black room and evoke a sun-drenched sentiment. I could fabricate the ephemeral. It felt like sorcery—and it changed everything.
Constraint, Curiosity, and the Genesis of Style
What many see as style is often a composite of constraints. Natural light shaped my early work because it forced me to see rather than manipulate. I learned patience from waiting for cloud cover, for the angle of dusk. I learned how to anticipate and respond rather than command.
Artificial light, on the other hand, demanded a different form of inquiry. It required architectural thinking—planning, placement, and measurement. But it also invited creative play. When freed from the tyranny of weather, I could experiment. I could create moonlight in a studio, mimic sunrise in a basement. The very act of constructing light sources fostered a deeper understanding of their emotional weight.
My style was not born fully formed; it was constructed plank by plank from these dual educations. The result is imagery that honors spontaneity without sacrificing intention. I’m no longer at the mercy of light’s whims. Instead, I engage with it in dialogue.
Embracing Ambiguity: Light as Subtext
The most compelling use of light is rarely literal. It serves best when it functions as subtext—an undercurrent of suggestion rather than declaration. This is where artistry thrives, in the liminal space between the seen and the implied.
Some of my most resonant portraits are those where light seems to hesitate. It grazes the frame, almost afraid to intrude. It leaves parts of the image unresolved, inviting the viewer to complete the story. This ambiguity is not accidental. It is a conscious act, one only made possible by mastering both control and surrender.
By embracing both natural and artificial light, I unlocked the ability to choreograph these ambiguities. A reflector tilted slightly, a flash dialed down a third stop—these minutiae became the punctuation marks in a visual sentence.
The Emotional Arc of Illumination
There is an emotional trajectory embedded in every session. Understanding how to shape that arc through light is akin to scoring a film. You decide where the crescendo lands, when to introduce silence, when to flood a scene with warmth, or let it retreat into shadow.
I now design sessions with this rhythm in mind. The opening frames may be soft, ethereal, coaxed by bounced fill and delicate side light. As trust builds, the setup may shift to something more sculptural, emphasizing texture, form, and contrast. Light becomes not just illumination but intention. Each modification tells the subject: I see you differently now.
This emotional fluency is what bridges the gap between vision and execution. It’s not about gear or settings. It’s about intuition, empathy, and an unwavering commitment to story.
Letting Go of the Binary
For years, I was stuck in a binary mindset—natural light good, artificial light bad. This polarity did nothing but limit my creative evolution. The truth is, both tools are extensions of the same desire: to shape perception.
When I stopped viewing light through a moral lens, I opened myself to broader spectrum possibilities. A dimmed LED can evoke the nostalgia of candlelight. A snooted flash can mimic the razor-edged shafts of midday sun slicing through blinds. The goal isn’t authenticity in a literal sense; it’s emotional veracity.
The myth of purity in photography is seductive, but ultimately hollow. What matters is the feeling you leave behind. And for that, any light will do—so long as it serves the story.
A Practice of Perpetual Refinement
Mastery is not a destination; it’s a practice of perpetual refinement. Each session, each lighting decision, is a brushstroke on an ever-evolving canvas. Some are bold. Some are nearly invisible. Together, they form a body of work that tells not just the story of your subjects, but of your artistic journey.
I still fail. I still overexpose, misplace shadows, or choose a modifier that kills the mood. But now, I greet those missteps with curiosity rather than shame. They are part of the process, reminders that art is not a product but a pursuit.
The Liminal Dance of Vision and Light
The gap between vision and execution is not a chasm—it’s a dance floor. And light, in all its unpredictable forms, is your partner. Sometimes it leads. Sometimes you do. But the magic happens when you stop counting steps and start listening to the rhythm.
In embracing both constraint and possibility, both nature and invention, I discovered something far more valuable than technical prowess. I found fluency. And with that, I finally began to speak in images, not just take them.
The Art of Adaptive Identity
Liberating the Lens from Labels
There was a time when I wore the label “natural light photographer” as a badge of honor—a tether to a creative identity that felt rooted, safe, and genuine. But over time, that label began to feel less like a definition and more like a limitation. Today, I don’t define myself by the type of light I use. I am no longer confined by nomenclature. I am an adaptive artist—an orchestrator of visual cadence, a conjurer of mood, a fluent interpreter of the human spirit using whatever elements the scene offers.
What I’ve come to understand is that labels, while once affirming, can become cages. The evolution of an artist demands not only skill but the courage to outgrow self-imposed titles. My work now pulses with a vocabulary that can’t be contained in such narrow terms. To speak through photography, one must embrace all dialects of light.
Technical Mastery as Muscle Memory
What once felt overwhelming—aperture settings, exposure compensation, white balance nuance—has now become an extension of instinct. ISO is no longer a crisis lever pulled in desperation, but a precision tool I wield with quiet confidence. Aperture, once a mystery of depth and blur, is now a fluid brushstroke I use to carve intention into my compositions. Shutter speed? It’s no longer a matter of avoiding blur—it’s rhythm, heartbeat, a conscious manipulation of time.
This evolution wasn’t immediate. It arrived through countless frames, relentless experimentation, and moments of failure that stretched into breakthroughs. In the beginning, I hesitated. I feared fumbling in front of clients. But that fear has been replaced by an insatiable hunger for control, for versatility, for expressive fluency. Mastery is not a destination but a relationship between curiosity and repetition.
Listening to Light with All the Senses
When I began to explore beyond the realm of daylight, I found myself becoming a better listener. Not only to clients and their body language, but also to the ambient cues within a scene. A crumbling wall might whisper diffused possibilities. A metallic surface might reflect a symphony of light trails. A shadow might conceal not absence, but story.
Artificial light revealed its secrets slowly. It demanded patience and attention. It wasn’t about overpowering reality—it was about mimicking, sculpting, interpreting. I learned to layer strobes as though brushing sunlight through fictional Venetian blinds. I painted radiance into corners where natural glow dared not tread. Sometimes, I discovered that the most powerful illumination was absence itself—a subject wrapped in partial obscurity, their soul peeking out through the veil of darkness.
From Illumination to Interpretation
The dichotomy between natural and artificial light is no longer meaningful to me. Light, in any form, is a collaborator. What matters is its dialogue with the subject, its willingness to participate in the narrative.
Natural light offered me reverence. It taught me to watch the sky, to rise early, to chase shadows across an open field. It trained me to wait and to yield. Artificial light, on the other hand, taught me command. It demanded I understand ratios, modifiers, and temperature shifts. It urged me to shape and to assert.
But together—when allowed to converse—they gave me a voice. A voice not rooted in one discipline, but in fusion. The hybridization of technicality and instinct. Through this synthesis, I’ve discovered something more than style. I’ve unearthed identity: elastic, resilient, and fearlessly undefined.
Chasing Emotion, Not Perfection
Despite all the gear, the settings, the modifiers, and meters, the heart of my work remains unchanged. I am not here to achieve technical perfection—I am here to evoke resonance. To summon the kind of truth that folds time into a single frame.
Sometimes, it’s the tremor in a father’s lip as he holds his newborn. Other times, it’s the kinetic joy of siblings mid-tumble, unfiltered and unbothered. It’s the grace of a dancer suspended in dusk, or the vulnerability of a quiet glance cast sideways. These are the things that transcend light itself. They make the image breathe.
There are moments when light fails me. The sun disappears. The batteries die. The modifiers collapse. But even then, the image survives—sometimes thrives—because the moment lives.
Becoming an Architectural Alchemist
In working with diverse light sources, I’ve learned to see spaces differently. No room is too dark. No time of day is a deterrent. I look for reflective surfaces, ambient glimmers, and textural bounce. A plain wall becomes a theater. A cracked mirror becomes a prism. A lampshade becomes a diffuser.
With intention and a touch of resourcefulness, I can construct a cathedral of imagery from the most ordinary space. Whether it’s a parking garage or a kitchen corner, I’ve learned to engineer atmosphere. The alchemy of adaptive photography lies in transmuting the mundane into magic.
The Language Beyond Gear
Some will argue over brand allegiance—this lens over that, this sensor’s dynamic range, that body’s frame rate. I no longer engage in those debates. Gear is not the soul of artistry; it’s merely a set of tools. What speaks in an image is not its sharpness, but its sincerity.
Whether I’m using a flagship DSLR or a humble mirrorless setup, my objective remains unaltered: to compose a visual poem. It’s not about brand loyalty or technological advantage. It’s about creating something that holds breath in the viewer’s breath. Something that doesn’t just show, but speaks.
The Ritual of Reinvention
To remain stagnant is to lose vitality. Every session is a crucible—a space where I test not only my technique but my willingness to evolve. I change focal lengths mid-session, not out of necessity, but to challenge perspective. I abandon tried-and-true setups in favor of uncharted arrangements.
This ritual of reinvention keeps my work supple, alert. I crave the discomfort of the unfamiliar. It’s there that innovation waits—in the margins, in the edges, in the realms where failure is a possibility but so is transcendence.
Freedom in Fluidity
Rejecting a fixed identity as a photographer has brought an unanticipated freedom. I am no longer bound by expectation. Clients don’t hire me for a “look.” They trust me to translate essence into image; however, that translation demands to be rendered.
One day, I may be shooting a family amidst a flurry of petals, entirely backlit by golden dusk. Another day, I may be indoors with grids, gels, and a narrow beam chasing drama across a dancer’s cheekbone. Each scenario requires not a new identity, but a deeper expression of the same one: the artist who adapts.
The Quiet Poetry of Imagery
Ultimately, every photograph I take is an invitation to pause. It’s not spectacle I seek, but subtlety. The crinkle in a smile. The crease in a shirt that suggests movement just ceased. The moment between inhaling and exhaling. This is the poetry I chase—the kind that doesn’t demand attention, but rewards it.
And whether the light was natural or crafted, whether the subject was posed or fleeting, what remains is this: an image that feels lived in. An image that remembers.
Conclusion
The pursuit of adaptive identity has never been about personal achievement. It’s about building a legacy of empathy through art. Of teaching others—clients, fellow photographers, even strangers—that photography is not about control, but conversation.
Each image becomes a record not just of how something looked, but how it felt to be there. How the air moved, how the laughter rang, how time curved for just a moment. This, to me, is the true power of adaptive artistry. It is a form of remembering not bound by optics or physics, but by the soul.