Simple Moments
This is one of those “you had to be there” moments.
The wind was howling off the Solent sea at Ryde, Isle of Wight. And howling is an understatement.
We were out for a stroll. To stretch the legs. And this gull was on the wall - doing its best not to be blown off.
I could see the tension in his body. It was like he was saying: “I’m not flying. I’ll crash into something.”
I walked up as a close as I could. And used the telephoto lens on my iPhone to close the gap. The gull? He didn’t care much what I was doing. His focus was on not being blown off the wall.
Now, a nice side effect? The texture in the sea wall. You can see all the details. The roughness. The patterns.
Then there’s the gull. The “Bugger this, I’m staying on the ground” look on his face. It made me smile.
That’s the great thing about snap shots. You go after one thing and get loads more.
About a minute after grabbing the shot, the gull took off. He lifted into the air and fought to fly into the town. I reckoned he was off to find somewhere out of the wind.
There’s the thing. It’s a photo of a gull on a wall. The story? Much deeper.