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Notes from the Silver Coast

A week of early mornings between Nazaré and Peniche, chasing the low Atlantic light with two film bodies and not much of a plan.

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Devil's Rock

There is a particular kind of light on the Silver Coast in early autumn. The sun sits low over the Atlantic for hours, the haze softens everything, and the colours wash out into the pale greys and creams that gave the coast its name.

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We based ourselves in a rented house above São Martinho do Porto and drove out before dawn most days. No shot list, no call sheet, just two film bodies, a handful of rolls and a loose idea of where the swell would be.

The best frames came from the hours in between, waiting for the fog to lift.
Image 1 in figure 4Image 2 in figure 4
Peniche, 7am

Working slowly

Shooting film forces a different pace. Every frame costs something, so you wait longer, look harder and press the shutter less. By the end of the week we had shot fewer than twenty rolls, and almost every one of them had something worth keeping.

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Foz do Arelho

The scans came back a fortnight later. Grainier than expected, warmer in the shadows, and closer to how the coast actually felt than anything we could have planned.