Expect the Unexpected
Landscape photography perhaps demonstrates this most obviously.
You can research a location, study maps, check tides and weather forecasts and arrive knowing precisely where you intend to stand.
But having a plan can sometimes create its own problem.
We become absorbed by what we expected to find.
The composition in front of us begins to command all our attention, particularly when it appears to be working.
Yet the photograph we hadn't anticipated may be somewhere else entirely.
Sometimes it requires us to move.
Sometimes to wait.
And sometimes simply to remember to turn around.
I was standing at the foot of the cliffs at Beachy Head, looking out to sea as the sun rose. There was no over-dramatised spectacle, just a heavy layer of cloud holding the light down, softening colour while giving a quiet clarity
to what lay ahead. I was absorbed by the view in front of me, content with the images I was making. It felt complete,
and I was ready to move on.
Then a small alarm went off somewhere in my head.
I had forgotten one of my own rules, to keep looking for another perspective. Almost instinctively, I turned around. Behind me rose 530 feet of white chalk cliffs, bathed in the most beautiful light and colours I hadn’t anticipated.
I had time for a single frame.
And then it was gone.
There is a phrase I have used for many years:
Expect the unexpected.
On the face of it, that makes very little sense.
How can you expect something that, by definition, you cannot predict?
For me, it has never really meant trying to anticipate what is going to happen.
It means remaining receptive to what might happen.
There is a difference.
Photography requires decisions. Where to stand. How to frame the scene. Whether to wait or move on.
But sometimes the most important decision is simply recognising that the photograph you hadn't planned may be more interesting than the one you had.
At other times, the setting is already there.
The background, light or composition catches my attention, but something is missing.
So I wait.
I don't necessarily know what I am waiting for.
Then someone enters the frame and, for a few seconds, everything connects.
There is an element of chance in moments like this.
The setting may already have caught my attention, but I have no control over what happens within it.
People arrive.
They pause, move, interact and disappear.
Most of the time nothing happens that asks to be photographed.
Occasionally, however, those independent elements briefly form a relationship.
It may last only seconds.
The photographer cannot create that moment.
But you can be there to recognise it.
People have increasingly become part of my photographs.
Not necessarily as the subject, but as a presence within them.
A figure can provide scale, introduce a narrative or completely change the balance of a composition.
And occasionally, two people create their own little story.
The unexpected does not always announce itself.
It does not have to be dramatic, fleeting or dependent upon everything aligning for a fraction of a second.
Sometimes it is simply something that wasn't there when you first looked.
Something ordinary within an extraordinary setting.
Something easily passed by.
Perhaps this is where observation becomes more important than anticipation.
There is nothing to predict.
Nothing to arrange.
You simply have to notice.
Sometimes the photograph I am about to make changes in an instant.
I had been photographing this Ancient Roman site as a study of texture and form. It was a quiet, almost lifeless place.
I had found my composition and was holding it in the viewfinder, ready to take the photograph.
Then, without warning, a stray dog jumped onto the stone and straight into my frame, and began drinking water from a hollow in the stone top.
For a moment, something completely ordinary brought life to a place defined by its past.
I hadn't waited for it.
I couldn't have anticipated it.
I simply had to respond.
Another reminder to expect the unexpected.
There are other occasions when several unrelated elements suddenly begin to work together.
A location may already have caught my attention. The composition may already be forming.
But it isn't quite a photograph yet.
Then people unexpectedly move through the space, briefly.
Positions change.
Reflections appear and disappear.
For a moment, things that have no reason to belong together suddenly do.
And then the moment passes.
This is one of the peculiar pleasures of photography.
You can recognise the possibility of a photograph without knowing precisely what that photograph will eventually be.
You can wait.
You can watch.
And when everything finally comes together, you have to recognise the moment.
At the first light of day, I arrived at the edge of Applecross on Scotland’s rugged west coast, drawn by the prospect of photographing the Cuillin Mountains on the Isle of Skye rising beyond the waters of the Inner Sound. The conditions, however, had other intentions. Persistent rain and low cloud concealed both land and sea, testing resolve as much as patience. Still, this was the right place to be, so I stayed, waiting for the moment when the landscape might reveal itself. Nearly twenty four hours passed in quiet anticipation. Then, as a new dawn broke, it happened. For a brief five minutes the cloud lifted, opening a narrow window onto two distant peaks, held between land, water, and sky.
Sometimes the photograph asks something more of us.
Not simply patience, but determination.
It isn't always about waiting for something to happen in front of us.
Sometimes it means believing sufficiently in the possibility of a photograph to stay when there is every reason to move on.
There are no guarantees.
The conditions may never change.
The photograph may never reveal itself.
But occasionally determination is rewarded.
There is, of course, an element of luck in all of this.
There has to be.
Being in the right place at the right time will always play its part in photography.
But luck alone does not make the photograph.
You still have to recognise it.
You still have to compose it.
And sometimes you simply have to be there.
Perhaps that is what expect the unexpected really means.
Not expecting something extraordinary to happen.
Not predicting the unpredictable.
But remaining open to possibility.
Being prepared to change direction.
Being prepared to stay.
And recognising when the photograph in front of you is better than the photograph you had imagined.
Sometimes the opportunity lasts for minutes.
Sometimes only seconds.
And sometimes you may have to wait twenty-four hours for five minutes.
You cannot know what will happen. You can only be there when it does.
Chris Page
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