Field notes · Travel
Island, From Above
An island the size of a village, a borrowed seat on a short flight and the bluest water I have photographed. It is not retouched.
The seaplane takes twenty minutes and the pilot banks once over the island if you ask nicely. I asked nicely, pressed the lens against the window and got four frames before the wing came round.
From above, a place is a diagram: the jetty, the ring of sand, the darker water where the reef drops. Everything that makes it a place on the ground, the heat, the smell of the kitchen, the man who runs the boats, is gone. What is left is the shape, and the shape is worth the flight.
On not moving
Half of travel photography is walking; the other half is sitting still in something that moves. This frame is from the second half.
The magazine ran it as a double page and the island's hotel asked to buy it. I said yes on the condition that they hang it in the boat shed, where the man who runs the boats can see it. He says it looks smaller than he remembers.
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