DISSOLVE

“You won’t get much of a photo out there today,” a well-meaning lady remarked as I prepared to walk onto the beach with my camera. I simply smiled in reply. The thick blanket of fog lying over the Kent coast was exactly what I had been waiting for.

 

A dull green glow pressed down, dissolving land and sea into the sky. The shoreline responded to the weight, the water flat and moving in slow motion. Definition slipped away within the vapour hanging heavy in the air, condensing into droplets on me and the camera lens. Perfect conditions.

 

Through thickening fog, the familiar markers of time and place began to disappear. The horizon no more, breakwaters faint outlines, beach pebbles dappled texture. In the silence what remained was not a scene to be read, but a condition to be entered.

 

It was never just about taking a photograph, as my lady may have thought. It was about being there, soaked through, present within the moment itself. 

 

The photograph became the memory.