Still

Some of the photographs I love most were not taken in loud places. They came just before something ended — the last light on the water, the slow give of frost as the morning warmed, a single flake holding its shape on a dark surface for as long as I dared to look.

Still is not about silence. It is the kind of quiet that asks you to slow down enough to notice. A figure where the land runs out. Gulls turning over a cold lake, weightless, going nowhere. None of it waited for me. It was simply there, and for once I was there too, paying attention.