We saw it in the clouds

I snapped this photo at the end of summer in 2016 on my iPhone. My mom, dad and I were heading towards the beach. Which beach? I don’t know. All I remember is that we made a spontaneous stop on our road trip home to check in with one of my mom’s relatives.

We met up with them in an RV park somewhere in New Brunswick, Canada. After exchanging stories of the road and general pleasantries, our hosts suggested we check out the beach. We wondered down the boardwalk, ditching our shoes and preparing our soles for the sand. I stopped a moment to take this photo. It wasn’t until I looked down at my screen that I realized how ominous the clouds looked. Telling my parents, we hurried our walk. We didn’t stay long on the beach as it became clearer and clearer that the skies didn’t want us there. We made it back to my mom’s cousin’s trailer before the rain really came down. Husking corn under the safety of the awning, I watched the storm pass overhead as my parents helped prepare dinner in the background.

I don’t think I really looked at the photo I had taken until the next day. Most likely, I was scrolling through my photos in the backseat of my parents’ car while we drove the many hours until our next stop. Happy with my snap, I uploaded (a different version than the one above) to my personal Instagram. It was a great shot. I’m still proud of it today.

The joy I get from this photo is from the moment it captured. Now I don’t mean the memory, it’s a good memory and all, walking down the beach and seeing the clouds and all that, but that’s not what keeps bringing me back to this photo. No, it’s the idea that I was in the right place, at the right time. The sky had to be just so, to capture this dramatic moment and that’s why I hold it in such esteem. Up until this point in my limited photographic career, I had never experienced real pride for a photo I had taken by simply just being there.

But, that’s the kind of photography I love. The kind you see in magazines like National Geographic. The stuff that makes you ask: “How did they take that?” Frozen moments where the photographer snapped the shutter in perfect unison. Photographs like that make me beyond envious, and if I’m being honest, remind me of my amateur photo-snapping-status. Oh, to always be in the right place, at the right time — can that be a super power? Because if it was, forget invisibility and super strength, I want to be always in the right moment.

That’s the story I wanted to keep when I took like this photo into the editing stage. Playing up the sense of drama in the dark clouds and clarifying the slight intensity of the waving grass. Really focusing on this exact moment. Starting with just the photo edit functions on my phone, I clicked the auto-adjust button to get going. Next, I subtly adjusted the exposure, brilliance, highlights, shadows, contrast, black point, saturation and sharpness. I then brought the photo into the PS Express app on my phone where I adjusted the aspect and skew to make the photo appear a little more straight-on as well as dehazing to really make the clouds pop. Et volià! The photo we have today!

Funnily enough, I actually only took two shots that day, the version you see above, and a slightly tighter one with more of a focus on the stairs. I guess that’s all you get when you’ve been presented with that lucky shot — one, maybe two clicks and the moment is gone.