There is an hour before dinner when the light in a coastal town goes soft and everyone slows down without deciding to. Shutters half closed, a table being laid, a child sent to buy bread. I photograph almost nothing else when I travel, and this is an attempt to say why.
Why not the sunset
The sunset is a performance. Everyone faces the same way, phones up, and the light does the same thing it did yesterday. The hour before it is a rehearsal nobody knows they are giving. A waiter wipes a table twice. A dog decides the warm step is his. The light comes in low and sideways and finds the texture in everything: plaster, hair, the grain of a wooden door.
That sideways light is the whole trick. At noon the sun is a spotlight from above and faces flatten into shapes. Late in the afternoon it becomes a lamp on a table, and people look like themselves.
Where to stand
Not in the square. The square is where the sunset crowd gathers, and you will spend the hour photographing the backs of heads. Walk one street inland, uphill if you can, and find the place where the light has to come round a corner to reach you. Corners are where it is interesting.
The three windows
In most towns there are three windows of about fifteen minutes each. The first is warm and still bright: good for streets, bad for faces. The second is the one the postcards are made from. The third, after the sun has gone behind the hill but before the lamps come on, is the one I care about. Colour drains out, the sky becomes a giant soft light, and nobody is posing any more because they think the show is over.
What to bring
- One camera, one lens, and the discipline not to change it.
- A place to sit. A step, a wall, the edge of a fountain. You will be there a while.
- Nothing to read. The waiting is the work.
- A word or two of the language, enough to say thank you and mean it.
If you can feel the light on the back of your hand, you are standing in it. Turn around.
A note from an old teacher, still true
A note on people
Photographing strangers in the hour before dinner is easier than at any other time, because they are busy. Nobody is being watched; everyone is doing the last small job of the day. Stay long enough to be furniture, keep the camera low, and take fewer pictures than you want to. The one you keep will be the one where nobody noticed you, including you.
Then put the camera away and have dinner. The light will do it again tomorrow.
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