I developed a photogram of a piece of net in seawater this week, which I do often, but I left it in longer than usual, maybe forty minutes, and the water crept up the paper unevenly and left a hard line across the middle where it stopped. Everything above it is pale, washed out, almost nothing. Below it the blue is deep and the net reads clearly. Two prints in one sheet, basically.

I've been staring at it for three days. Part of me thinks the line is the whole point, that it says something about where the water reached and where it didn't, and I should stop trying to make it stop happening. The other part thinks I've just made a mistake and I'm dressing it up because I don't want to start again.

What I keep coming back to is that I can't reproduce it. If I decide the line is the piece, I have about as much control over the next one as I do over the weather. And I'm not sure I'm honest enough with myself to know whether I like it or whether I'm tired.

I've had prints where the accident was clearly a gift and I knew it straight away. This one I genuinely don't know. That's the part I'd like help with, if anyone has a way of telling the difference that isn't just waiting a month and hoping you feel differently.