The fisherman
- 📍 Location: Mers-les-Bains, Somme, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The sky and the sea had settled into the same pale rose and the jetty ran out through the middle of it to its small tower. On the shingle in the foreground, a man sat with a rod propped in front of him, not moving.
I framed with the beach taking the bottom third as a dark band, the water flat in the middle, and the jetty crossing to the right. The fisherman sits low and small on the left, as far from the lighthouse as the frame allows: the picture is built on the gap between the two.
The exposure is high and the contrast deliberately low. There is almost no black in this image apart from the silhouettes, and that flatness is what lets the pink read as a colour rather than as a sunset effect.
Sea fishing is mostly waiting, and photographing it is the same activity conducted twenty metres away. I stood there for a long time and he never once turned round, which I took as permission.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
