The Lifeguard’s Tools
This image was taken on a humid Adriatic morning, before the sun had made its way through the marine haze. The beach is empty, save for the standard equipment of Italian stabilimenti: a stack of white plastic loungers, a faded parasol, and a time-worn pedalò parked like a stranded vessel waiting for a purpose it hasn’t had in years.
The scene centres on a lifeguard, though not in the dramatic or muscular sense the word often evokes. He stands waist-deep in the still sea, just off a sign that likely warns swimmers of a drop-off or prohibited zone. His posture is unremarkable—calm, passive, perhaps resigned. And yet, that mundanity is what I wanted to capture.
In terms of composition, the image falls back on symmetry, but resists being overly formal. The pedalò anchors the foreground, both physically and narratively, flanked on one side by stacked loungers and on the other by the closed parasol. The man in the water bisects the frame almost precisely, yet the slight offset and the curvature of the shoreline prevent the scene from feeling static. The horizontal line of the breakwater offers a visual boundary, separating human presence from the open, unknowable sea beyond.
Technically, the exposure is balanced. The flat light lends the image a diffused calmness—neither moody nor bright, but tonally consistent. Shadows are gentle, and highlights hold. It would’ve been easy to push contrast or saturation in post to give it more ‘punch’, but that would have betrayed the honesty of the scene. This beach is not postcard material. It’s part of the real, somewhat dishevelled everyday of Italy’s coastal life.
The subdued palette works in its favour. Muted reds of the boat, pale yellows of a child’s bucket, and the bleached plastic whites convey the wear of sun and salt without cliché. The sea’s dull silver under the cloud-heavy sky reinforces the atmosphere of liminality—between rest and duty, leisure and labour, land and water.
Ultimately, Lifeguard is less a depiction of beach culture than a quiet observation of its quieter moments. Nothing is happening, and that’s precisely the point.
