Shooting the cover

I live in Simon’s Town, and over the past five years I’ve been documenting the coastline around the Cape Peninsula. The peninsula is unique because of the abundance of natural beauty so close to human settlements. Living here has allowed me to photograph landscapes in many different and sometimes wild conditions.

Nature offers moments of tranquillity, but it also has moments of ferocity that can strike fear into us, such as when a storm hits the coast. Such moments have the potential to imprint on our minds and our souls.

For me, this is the pursuit of landscape photography – to not only capture what my eyes see, but to convey feelings of awe and wonder. That’s because an encounter with nature engages all senses: You smell the salty air; you hear the lapping water and seagulls screeching; you feel the wind against your face.

Translating such a moment into a photograph – a medium limited by four borders – is a challenging task. As photographers, we might never fully achieve this, but