Someone worked out, decades ago, exactly how many tonnes of concrete it would take to hold this shoreline still. The answer is apparently this many, arranged like toy blocks emptied out of a box.
They are enormous up close. Photographs flatten them into something you could pick up, which is why I put the lighthouse in the top right — not because it is interesting, but because it is the only thing in the frame whose size you already know.
Scale needs a witness
This is the recurring problem with photographing infrastructure. The engineering is impressive precisely because of its size, and size is the first thing a camera throws away. You need something borrowed from the everyday world for the eye to measure against.
- A person, which is the obvious answer and usually the wrong one, because they become the subject.
- A door, a handrail, a step — anything built to fit a human body.
- A known landmark at a known distance, which is what the lighthouse is doing here.
- Nothing at all, and let the photograph be about pattern instead of scale.
I tried the last option first and filled the frame edge to edge with concrete. It made a decent abstract and a poor record. There is a place for both, but I had come to remember the sea wall, not to make wallpaper.
The light went orange for about eight minutes and then gave up. I stayed until the lighthouse was the brightest thing left, which is the point in the evening when a harbour stops being a place of work and starts being a view.
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