Most mornings I try and go look at the sea. It is a
wonderful way to start the day. It serves as a useful
reminder of the insignificance of most things, which is
especially useful on the morning of a work day.
On these mornings I invariably capture the scene through
photo and video, and am always interested in the position of
the sun and the moon, the state of the tide, the light and
dark and the way they interact with land and water.
This essay takes these daily observations and recomposes them
into a single aggregate day — the passage of time
represented across seasons and states, the position of the
sun and the moon against the horizon, and the swelling and
ebbing of the tide.
The photographs are arranged in order of time — earliest on
the left, progressing through the morning. Each image is one
observation from a different day, drawn from years of
mornings on the South Devon coast.
Along the bottom runs a tide chart spanning one full lunar
cycle — 29½ days — modelled on the tides of South Devon.
Each small dot on the curve marks one photograph in the
collection, placed at the point in the lunar cycle at which
it was taken.
The vertical line marks the current photograph's position
within that cycle. Where it meets the dashed horizon line, a
dot holds that position — a fixed reference point moving
through the lunar month.
The sun is positioned by its actual altitude and compass
bearing for that morning: east is left, south is centre,
west is right. The moon is positioned the same way, its
visible phase reflecting the real illumination for that date.
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