The Day After The Tide

After the tide, the river comes back to normality, while the boatmen account for the damages.

I waited for the light to fall low enough to cut across the hulls and expose what the flood left behind. This isn’t a storm photo—it’s what follows. Boats grounded sideways, lines tangled, some afloat, some tilted into the banks. Nothing dramatic. Just consequence.

Shot from the opposite bank with a 300mm telephoto, compressed enough to layer the damage. The image stacks: river in the foreground, boats mid-frame, wreckage and crane behind. The eye bounces between verticals—poles, masts, supports—and diagonals—listing decks and snapped canopies. It’s cluttered by design. Recovery never looks clean.

Exposure leaned toward the highlights to retain the glint on water and fibreglass. Midtones were brought up slightly in post to extract detail in shadowed cabins and crane rigging. Colour left natural: winter greens, metal greys, beige hulls. All muted. The scene doesn’t need mood enhancement. It delivers its own.

Sharpness runs front to back. f/9 to hold the plane, ISO 200, 1/500s to deal with shimmer on the surface. No motion blur, no people in frame, but their presence is implied—somewhere off-shot, accounting for the damage, weighing cost, sorting rope from salvage.