"Only at First" was shot over several months from the back of my house in Lewes, East Sussex. It records in part the development of a wetland site into a housing development, using a variety of filming strategies including animated permutations of sets of framings, as well as freer sequences that make use of the Bolex camera’s motorised zoom function. A variety of lenses was used, from 10mm wide angle to 300mm tele-photo, which latter compresses the space, and hence the atmosphere, to create ephemeral, unstable shots full of airy ‘noise’. - Nicky Hamlyn