There’s something magical about shutters that makes me want to photograph them. Some people enjoy photographing doorways or windows, but I like to collect images of shutters on my travels. That may, in fact, be part of their appeal: we don’t have shutters here in England, where there’s little need to block out the light without closing the window; rarely are summer nights hot enough that anyone wants to leave the windows open.

So shutters are, for me at least, romantic and foreign things that I only see when I’m on holiday in a warm country. My pictures of shutters are souvenirs from sunnier climes. These shutters are from the South of France.

Shutters tend to be painted in bright colours and form regular patterns, adding personality to a building. The more ragged and crumbling they are, the better. I saw these shutters on a recent trip to Athens.

Shutters have other merits, too. When you are inside a building with shutters or window coverings on there, they can cast wonderfully appealing patterns of light and shade. This image was taken in a house we like to rent in the south of France, where shutters help keep the house cool during the heat of the day, and where opening and closing the shutters as the sun slides across the sky is part of the daily routine. It’s a quality that no doubt makes several people look up website for wooden shutters to get something like this themselves. When I look at this picture I can feel the texture of the floor under my feet, and hear the sounds of people walking past the house on their way to an evening out.

Finally, I suspect that shutters appeal to photographers because, well, we’re obsessed with shutters of a different kind. Like the shutters in our cameras, shutters on windows are all about controlling light. And when used appropriately, they can create some striking images.

kirstin