Event Horizon - How an interview changed my life forever.

The event horizon is the boundary near a black hole where gravity becomes too strong to escape. It is the point of no return. Cross it, and your trajectory is no longer your own — you are on a new course, whether you chose it or not.

I recently crossed such a boundary, completely unintentionally, and it has put me on a path I cannot escape from. That path is what some would describe as your calling. Others might say passion, purpose, or reason for being. I call it my legacy — not legacy in the sense of great deeds and monuments, not statues or buildings bearing your name. Legacy in the quieter, more personal sense: doing something you are genuinely proud of, something you would feel honoured to be remembered for.

Here is how it happened.

My neighbours are City Farmer, a demonstration garden and educational organisation that helps people learn to grow food in the city, compost, and transform their relationship with the land. They are as lovely as the garden they tend. Every year their hops flow over my back fence, and every year they brew beer from the harvest. For the past couple of years they have used some of my astronomical images on their bottle labels — a small, joyful collision of earth and sky. Sometimes they call up to me while I'm working in the observatory, and I call back down to their students about what I'm doing up there. Together, we are where the earth and sky connect.

It was through City Farmer that a writer found his way to my door. His name is Kerry Banks, and he has had a distinguished career writing for publications like National Geographic, Discovery, and Maclean's, among others. He was curious, as many people in the neighbourhood are, about what exactly goes on inside that strange dome on top of the building. I invited him over and we sat down for an interview — and somewhere in the middle of it, perhaps in the middle of a sentence, my life changed. I had crossed the event horizon.

I have given talks about astrophotography before, at events and conferences and astronomy clubs. They usually follow a familiar shape: I show images, I explain that astrophotography is a slippery slope, that once you take the first step you are more or less destined to spend every dollar and waking moment in its pursuit. The interview began like that. Then it swerved.

Good writers have a way of doing that. What began as a conversation about how I do what I do became a conversation about why — and then, more uncomfortably, about what it all means. As a professional filmmaker and photographer with over two decades of experience, I can talk about f-stops and lenses and mirrors and filters without much effort. But the meaning behind the images? What compels me to make them? What do they hold for me, and for the people who see them? Why do we exist? These were questions I hadn't had the space to sit with since beginning this chapter of my work. I felt the ground shift a little. This wasn't the interview I had prepared for, not the lines I had rehearsed or the impressive things I had lined up to say. This was something else entirely.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have my work featured in Montecristo Magazine, because it gave me something more valuable than exposure — it gave me a new way of seeing what I do. I am not simply operating complicated equipment to photograph space. I am exploring the universe and our place within it. I am trying to understand the science of what makes the world turn, and the philosophy of what that means — to me, to you, to all of us. I am not capturing things. I am curating them and sharing them.

It is remarkable how a single conversation can alter the course of everything. One moment you are moving forward on a familiar path, and the next you have crossed a threshold you didn't see coming — drawn toward something that feels less like a choice and more like an inevitability. That is the nature of the event horizon. You don't decide to cross it. You simply look up one day and realise you already have.

Checkout the online version of my feature in Montecristo Magazine here.