Between Tide and Light: A Photographer’s View of the Coast
Off Duty
Story and Photography by Debra Somerville
The ocean has always had a quiet pull on me. As a fine art photographer based in Delray Beach, I’m drawn to those fleeting coastal moments when the world seems to pause between tide and light.
One of my favorite images, Off Duty, was captured at sunrise on Main Beach in East Hampton. I had wandered down to the sand with my golden retriever and a cup of coffee, the Atlantic wrapped in that soft Hamptons haze that seems to exist only in the earliest hours of the morning. The lifeguard chair stood alone against the horizon, perfectly still, and for a moment, the beach felt as though it had taken the morning off. I turned, lifted my camera, and made the photograph.
Moments like that seem to follow me wherever there is water. In Palm Beach, I noticed two women sitting side by side in bright beach chairs, laughing together as they watched the ocean—an image that became Ladies Who Beach. While traveling with friends in Exuma, I found myself surrounded by turquoise water so vivid and sand so white it seemed to glow beneath the sun. Many of the most beautiful beaches there can only be reached by boat, and once you arrive, the world becomes wonderfully quiet except for wind and water. Even on vacation, my camera is never far away.
Ladies Who Beach
That instinct followed me to northern Italy, where I watched a sailboat glide across the calm waters of Lake Garda with the mountains rising behind it. The movement of the sail, the light across the water, and the quiet rhythm of the lake created another moment that simply asked to be photographed.
Gliding Sailboat Lake Garda
Whether I’m standing on a beach in the Hamptons, drifting through the Exumas, or watching a sail move across an Italian lake, the feeling is always the same: the calm, the movement, and the quiet power of water.
Perhaps that is the real magic of it—it never repeats itself.
Debra Somerville is a fine art photographer based in Delray Beach, Florida. Inspired by coastal life and the ever-changing character of the ocean, her work captures the intersection of light, movement, and atmosphere along the shoreline