The Compelling Power of Photography

The sandstorm came fast — the kind that scours your skin raw, leaves grit between your teeth, and makes you regret every bit of exposed flesh. I had the Pentax K-3 II with the DA* 50–135mm f/2.8 mounted and ready, but even the gear felt fragile in that wind. Eighty kilometres per hour doesn’t sound like much until it becomes horizontal.

In the middle of that chaos, he walked in. No jacket, no hood, no camera gear — just shorts, sunglasses, and a phone. He stopped, planted his feet in the shifting sand, and took a photo. Not staged, not dramatic. Just a gesture. In the middle of discomfort, maybe pain, he still needed to make the image. That was the moment I took mine.

The composition took care of itself. He stood dead centre, the horizon jagged and hostile behind him, the sea boiling just beyond. The sand blurred at ankle level, turning the landscape into a kind of suspended motion. What grounded the photo was his posture — still, absorbed, disconnected from the violence around him.

Exposure was metered off the sea — blown whites on the waves, darker tones in the sky. I held detail in the figure, letting the storm define its own tones. The image is slightly desaturated by necessity; no colour correction could have restored the contrast lost in airborne sand. But the haze is the point. That veil, that obscuring grit — it’s what gives the photo its atmosphere.

This isn’t a photo about climate or adventure. It’s about the reflex to document. That small, impulsive urge to freeze time, even when time is hostile. That’s the compelling power of photography — no grand narrative needed.

The gear? Flawless. The Pentax shrugged off the sand like a tank. But it wasn’t the camera that defined the shot. It was the human instinct to take it.