Lighting, as any photographer will tell you, is one of the key factors that determines the quality of a shot. So it was one of those rare moments when you manage to strike gold that I got this shot of St Catherine’s Oratory on the most southerly tip of the Isle of Wight in the no-mans-land between two dueling weather fronts. The Oratory’s history is nearly as dramatic as the weather here: Built by the Lord of Chale in penance for stealing wine from a nearby shipwreck (a sort of medieval ASBO), the tower was to act as a lighthouse to prevent further tragedy on the treacherous shore below. Trouble is, location surveys weren’t exactly prioritized back then, so it was often shrouded in fog from it’s high location and later fell into it’s current disuse.
Either way, it’s imposing presence has never left. Standing up here with an approaching storm on one side and a glittering sunlit sea on the other, with kestrels riding the battering winds that howled through the top of the oratory, it was hard to believe you were in the same world.