Not every photograph has to be planned.
Sometimes we simply find ourselves somewhere, notice something that interests us and take a photograph.
This was one of those occasions.
There was no spectacular light and nothing particularly dramatic happening. I simply liked the way the rocky headland reached into that enormous expanse of water, the distant coastline gradually disappearing beneath a heavy sky, and that tiny lighthouse sitting almost unnoticed on the horizon.
It was an opportunistic photograph. And perhaps that is one of the reasons I have become so attached to it.
Photography has an extraordinary relationship with memory. An image can take us back to far more than the scene contained within the frame. We remember where we were, how we were feeling, the weather, the people we were with and sometimes an entire period of our lives.
I think we sometimes forget this when we become too concerned with creating the perfect image. Landscape photography can involve considerable planning – locations, viewpoints, tides, weather and light – but some of my own personal photographs have simply happened because I noticed something and responded to it.
And the more I look at this photograph, the more I appreciate it visually too.
There is simplicity to it that perhaps I didn’t fully recognise at the time. The shapes, the muted colours, the enormous areas of space and the tiny lighthouse all seem to work together. What began as an instinctive photograph now feels almost like a piece of art to me.
Perhaps that is the real beauty of opportunistic photography.
We don’t always know how important a photograph will become when we press the shutter.
Sometimes its meaning comes later.
Available as a Fine Art Print
If this photograph speaks to you too, the way it does to me, it is available as a fine art print from my online store.