Gotcha!

It was the contrast that caught my eye.

A man stands knee-deep in the Adriatic shallows, focused, precise, moving a small blue net through the water like he’s brushing dust off glass. He’s working under the shadow of a trabocco—a towering wooden fishing machine, all cables and beams, designed to drop massive nets and haul in fish by the hundreds. The kind of structure that speaks of industry, tradition, scale.

But here he is. Alone. Shirtless. Waist-deep. Fishing by hand.

The second frame pulls back. You see it all—the full span of the trabocco, its arms stretched wide like a maritime cathedral. And at the base, dwarfed by design, the same man continues with his tiny net. No drama. No defiance. Just focus. A kind of quiet efficiency.

There’s something quietly metaphorical about it. The large net above, suspended, unused. The small one below, active. You start to wonder whether he’s avoiding the big machine out of necessity or choice. Whether this is an act of resilience, independence—or just routine.

Photography often rewards looking past the obvious. The big net is the first thing you see. The structure dominates the horizon. But the story’s in the details: the labour that continues below, without noise, without scale. A gesture that looks small, but means something.

And maybe that’s the point. Sometimes you don’t need the whole rig to make a living. Sometimes, all it takes is a net and a steady hand.