Walking on the shore
- 📍 Location: Ault, Somme, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The tide had gone a long way out and left a sheet of wet sand that was returning the whole sky. One person was walking across it, far enough away to be just a mark, with the town and the beginning of the chalk cliffs on the horizon behind them.
Black and white, and for a specific reason: on this coast the sand and the sky are nearly the same tone in colour, and the picture collapses. In monochrome I can push them apart — a bright reflective ground, a darker sky with real cloud structure — and the figure appears.
I framed with the horizon high and the wet sand taking most of the image. The scattered dark pebbles across it are not clutter; they are the only texture holding the foreground together, and they give the eye something to cross before it reaches the walker.
Ault is a town that is slowly losing its cliff to the sea, and there is something in the emptiness of its beach at low tide that suits that. I photographed a person walking, which is the smallest thing that can happen here, and it was enough.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
