Light falls on the boys yet barely on the water. This is not their first sideways jump. We know this by the droplets of water on the back of one boy, and then what appears to be gusto in the widened mouth of his fellow. The shimmer of the lake recalls a black hole. A slender arm reaches past the frame, the other end of which is a hand balled into a fist. The boy is held by the wrist, a grasp that is firm and loose in equal measure, like a baton being passed.

The photograph was taken in Lake Malawi, Chembe. 

This photo happened in the heat of the moment as a group of children were playing on the docks of Lake Malawi. I was there with my family, enjoying the lake much like them. They hung and leapt and pulled at the water with the sort of crackling glee children have. I had with me my first ever DSLR, which I'd had permanently converted to near infrared—I hoped that I could give my old camera new life and in turn that it would give me a new way to bring play and experimentation into my photographic practice again. And so it tickles me that the main expression of this image is play and sort of a leap of trust.

The image stirs very warm memories for me, not only of the space I was in while I took it, but because of the moment between these two boys which feels so intimate and exciting to me. There's a sort of pure joy, trust and thrill in the split-second capture. I think it's at once familiar for the viewer and completely unique to these boys. 

I see photography in part as the act of archiving the human experience. I think it's important that we don't forget to document moments of joy, alongside some of the more difficult aspects of being human.

Photography can bring the human element to the stories we tell in a way that is both accessible and yet so powerful.