The adventure of light, and nature

Alone with his camera, he stopped at another bend on the path around the moat.  He’d left his friend rigging fishing poles to catch their supper back at their campsite. Here, he thought, would be a good place for a sunset shot.

The sea-rock and limestone path he walked around defined the moat at old Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.  Fifteen paces back along the moat wall, he set up his camera on the tripod. He set the exposure for fifteen seconds and walked back to where the path turned into the sea and posed with his back to the camera, his face to the setting sun.

He focused across the flat, steel-blue sea.  A long grey cloud edged the horizon. As the sun set, sunlight patterned the sky and the sea, darker at his feet and above and orange and blue and white just above the cloud.

He stood in the quiet lee of the fort.  The sea lay flat, blocked from the wind by the fort’s high masonry wall; sixteen million bricks, and still unfinished.  Above the rampart, the wind gusted twenty knots or better.  The wind hummed out across the gulf.

The sea changed hues as the sun dropped. The sky above the cloud seemed to be trying to hold onto the color of the sea.

Fifteen seconds were more than up.  He walked back to his camera. He pushed in the tripod legs and continued walking around the bend into the push of the wind. He was not hungry for anything but more light but he knew he had to eat.  His friend was a good fisherman. They would surely be eating snapper for supper.

Photo by Ian Wilson. See more photos by Wilson on Instagram.