CATHY KNIGHT-WAITE is a filmmaker and photographer based in The South West of England and shares her time between her home in Devon and a tiny cottage in a small fishing village in Cornwall. Nature is a big focus of her work, whether it’s spending hours on deserted winter beaches capturing the wilds of the ocean or a lens thick in the hedgerows of the English countryside. She is developing two websites, The Sea Diaries and The Hedgerow Chronicles both to be launched next year. A third project ‘The Soulos’, is in its early stages of development and draws on her television career in documentary filmmaking and a deep interest in people and their soul stories.
“As a child I remember my father taking photographs and developing them. Colour transparencies, premiered at slide shows in our little sitting room, mainly family groups with my brother and I smiling until it hurt, our eyes scrunched as we stared into the sun. We would sit, in identical hand knitted aran jumpers, my father jumping adeptly into the picture at the last minute. I was given my first camera at 8 years old. I would use my years worth of 110 cartridges on precious holidays in the Scilly Isles which, along with my mother, gave me my love of the sea. On my 16th birthday I was given a 35mm Praktica. We set up a darkroom in the garage. The magic as my first black and white print began to develop has never worn off.
In my early 20s after working on a Cornish farm, four years at Art college released my creativity. Two years of photography and two years of film, majoring in direction. I am grateful for these years, the luxury of time plunged in the darkroom and cutting film on the trusted Steinbeck. Here I really learnt a craft. It was a strict training, technical and artistic. The photographs of Ansel Adams, Sebastio Selgado and Magnum, an early inspiration. Discussions wtih fellow students over test strips, ingrained in my memory, as we deliberated for hours over the choice of the contrast and paper choice. Now its instinctive, and although I work primarily on digital formats, I am revisiting Black and White film and setting up a darkroom.
A 25 year career in television followed and the birth of my son. As a self shooting director/producer/editor I worked for ITV, BBC and numerous high profile corporate clients, creating original light entertainment series on a broad spectrum of subjects winning three RTS awards. My passion was for documentaries; stories where people took centre stage. The TV industry unlocked doors and my camera and I gained privileged access into diverse worlds and and a unique insight into different lives’ and experiences. I will always be thankful to the people I captured through the lens. Without their stories and shared knowledge, television could have been a vacuous place. To this day I miss working with a crew, arriving on location and walking into the unknown but sadly TV increasingly required no creativity from me, at all.
Aged 46 I stopped. I stopped so that I could begin again.
I wake up everyday with a sense of excitement and purpose. Its in my nature to juggle different projects, i thrive on diversity and have striven all my life not to be pigeon holed. Today, my personal work focuses primarily on capturing the beauty of the natural world around me and although i love to travel and and I am happiest working close to home.
Im blessed to live in The South West of England, on the doorstep of some of the most beautiful countryside. Whenever I travel for work, I’m always blown away by the beauty of the English landscape on my return. It was one such flight, descending over the patchwork of fields below, that inspired my photographic journal of the hedgerows. During my four year mission I have learnt to recognise over 300 plants and made my acquaintance with some remarkable trees, who I visit throughout the seasons like old friends.
My dream days are spent on wild beaches, where perfect light and tides coincide, capturing the ocean in both still and moving image. The changeable English weather creates a never ending canvas, one minute so different to the next. Seas tarnished treacle gold by the setting sun, hours later have magically transformed, whipped into a frenzied dance by an off-shore wind. The energy is awe inspiring, the pull of the moon working its magic as is each wave as it is propelled to the shore, a humbling and life enhancing experience in equal measures. An urgency drives me time after time to capture this display of nature’s raw power, its utter beauty and essence in its simplest form, an urgency inbuilt, stemming from a life long obsession with all aspects of the sea.
Now life travels at different pace.
I met the Astrologer, Michele Knight in 2014. A life changing moment. We live and work in Devon, on a variety of projects, travelling when we can, producing films, podcasts and photographic content that provide support and inspiration for others. Michele's websites have become the foremost spiritual home. We are both driven and blessed to love our work. We married on Friday 13th 2020, a few days before the world plunged into lockdown because of the Covid pandemic. The magician and the muggle melding two very different worlds, The Knight-Waites and I am so proud to be The Astrologers Wife.
Jacko, my son, is an immensely talented photographer and filmmaker. From time to time we drive off in our vans in the search for waves, perfect light and secret places to camp for the night. It cannot be overestimated how proud I am and what a joy it is to have a shared love of image making with my son. I look forward to our adventures to come.
