Luck

This shot was taken on a trip to Portugal with some friends. It wasn’t a photography trip by any stretch, and I hadn’t been able to scout the location in advance at all—I just knew that there were some sea stacks at the end of the road in the next town over. I had to at least try to get a shot! I showed up at 3am, and wandered around in the dark until I found a trail that looked like it went down to the water. At the bottom was a concrete platform that looked to be the perfect perch, but the seas were angry that day and I could hear waves crashing all around me. Fortunately, it was low tide and I stayed mostly dry—though I did spend most of the next couple hours with one arm hooked around a rusted metal railing coming up out of the water, and the other arm ready to grab my camera and tripod at a moment’s notice if I got hit with a big wave. After sunrise I was getting ready to pack up—I was happy with some of my shots, though the lack of clouds was a little disappointing. Suddenly, light started to pour through a gap between the cliffs on the shore and one of the sea stacks, creating these streaks of light, and illuminating the ocean spray kicked up when the waves crashed against the cliff. When I came back with my friends a few hours later at a normal time of day, the tide had come in and the platform was completely inundated by waves. I got lucky that I found a great location without the usual advanced scouting, lucky the tides cooperated, and, most of all, lucky I didn’t get swept out to sea with no one else around to rescue me!