When the Light Starts to Change
There is a certain point in August when I start feeling a little melancholy.
Summer isn't over. In fact, some of the best parts of summer are just getting started. New Jersey tomatoes are coming into their own, the beach is still warm, and there are still plenty of long evenings left.
But you can feel the change coming.
Back-to-school signs start appearing. The days are getting shorter. The light begins to change. You start realizing that those long summer days aren't going to last much longer.
For me, this is also the point when I start looking both backward and forward.
I look back at what I photographed during the summer and think about what worked, what didn't, and what I learned. At the same time, I'm already looking ahead to the next season here at the Jersey Shore.
The craft fairs will start filling the calendar. The crowds will thin out. And then comes one of my favorite times of year:
Locals' Summer.
That's when the Shore starts feeling like ours again.
And maybe that's why I've been thinking more about photography this month. Summer gives you plenty of opportunities to make photographs. August starts making you think about what those photographs mean.
Sometimes the photograph is hiding inside the original
This month gave me a perfect example.
While visiting OBX, we took a tour to see the wild horses. We were lucky to find a few hiding from the sun in the space below someone's home. I photographed a horse standing deep inside a doorway while riding in a slowly moving vehicle.
We couldn't stop. They aren't allowed to by local law. I couldn't move closer. I was sitting in the truck. I couldn't change my position. The vehicle had to keep moving.
When I looked at the original photograph later, it was dark. The horse was buried in the shadows and, at first glance, it didn't look like much.
But the photograph was there.
The composition was there. The horse's expression was there. The moment was there.
It just needed to be found.
That reminded me of something important: don't be too quick to throw away a photograph because the first version doesn't look the way you remember seeing it.
Sometimes the camera didn't quite capture what your eye saw. That's where good editing comes in.
Photography often gets presented as if you can control everything: your position, your light, your settings and your composition.
That's not always how it works.
Sometimes you're standing exactly where you're told to stand. Sometimes you're moving through a scene in a vehicle. Sometimes the light is terrible. Sometimes your subject gives you two seconds.
You still have to make the photograph.
That horse taught me that working within limitations is part of photography. I couldn't change the circumstances. I could only take the best photograph I could from where I was.
And then there are the photographs you didn't plan
Those are often the ones I remember.
The horse wasn't planned. The SpaceX launch wasn't planned. The beach video at sunrise wasn't planned as some technical exercise.
They happened because I was there with a camera.
A lot of photography happens because you're paying attention when something appears in front of you. You can see these and some of my other recent photographs on Instagram at @tomsseasidelens.
Keep the camera with you. Keep looking.
You don't always know what you're going to find.
So I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to summer. There are still tomatoes to pick, can and eat, beaches to photograph, and plenty of warm days ahead.
But I'm also ready for what's coming.
The crowds will leave. The light will change. The craft fairs will return. And somewhere between summer and fall, the Jersey Shore will settle into the season I look forward to most.
Locals' Summer.
I'll have my camera with me.
