Street Compass Rose

There’s something both poetic and ironic about finding a compass rose embedded in the tarmac — a relic of navigation sitting just a few metres from a working fishing port, in an age where most people rely on satellites to find the nearest café. I came across this one early in the morning, when the sun was low and the light had that burnished quality that makes asphalt glisten.

The framing here was deliberate: I chose to crouch low, letting the compass rose dominate the foreground, while the fishing boats in the distance anchor the background in place. This low perspective exaggerates the texture of the cracked road surface, contrasting the intended permanence of the compass with the slow decay of the street itself. The discarded plastic cup on the bottom right was not staged — but its accidental presence adds a commentary of its own, a little nod to the clutter of the everyday creeping into symbols of direction and purpose.

Technically, the exposure was tricky. Shooting almost straight into the sun required careful metering to preserve some detail in the shadows while keeping the highlights from blowing out entirely. Inevitably, there’s a slight flare from the lens, a faint green ghost on the lower right — the kind of imperfection I could remove, but have chosen not to. It belongs here, a reminder that light behaves on its own terms.

The fishing boats, silhouetted against the morning sky, give depth to the image without pulling attention away from the compass. The symmetry of their masts subtly mirrors the radial lines of the compass rose, creating a quiet echo between sea and street.

This photograph isn’t about the accuracy of navigation — it’s about the persistence of symbols. Even if your GPS never fails, the compass rose remains, stubbornly pointing in all directions at once, waiting for the moment someone looks down and remembers how people once found their way.