Seal home
- 📍 Location: Pointe du Hourdel, Baie de Somme, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
A seal on a sandbank near the Pointe du Hourdel, in the Baie de Somme, with the houses of the far shore floating in the haze behind it. The animal lies along the horizontal line of the bank, head lifted, in the banana posture seals adopt when they are hauled out and comfortable, and the whole picture is built on two bands: sand below, water and village above.
I framed it wide and left the houses in. The temptation with a seal is to isolate it and pretend to wilderness, and that would have been a lie about this bay. Here the colony hauls out within sight of the rooftops, the tide comes in twice a day beneath the windows, and people and animals share a horizon. The distance between the seal and the houses is the subject.
The light is white and completely diffused, a sea haze that removes contrast and saturation and leaves a picture made of three or four values of pale grey and sand. A long focal length compresses that haze, so the village appears to stand just behind the animal when it is in fact several hundred metres away.
Seals watch you back. You come to the bank, you sit down, you wait, and the colony turns its heads and observes you calmly for as long as you stay, which puts the roles in their correct order. I wanted the print to hold that coexistence: a wild animal, a village, and almost no colour between them.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
