Through the window

This is a photograph that I have pre-visualised for quite some time, I left home with this shot clearly in my mind, taking a photograph of Rough Island in Strangford Lough through a car door window, using the window itself to frame the image, has created a natural and intimate composition that blends human presence with the surrounding landscape.

You're sitting in the driver's seat, the car pulled into a quiet corner of Island Hall car park that overlooks Strangford Lough. The weather is typical of Northern Ireland—clouds hanging low with diffuse light filtering through, casting a soft silver sheen over the water. The car door is closed, and you're angled just right so that the window frame becomes a natural border to the view.

Through the door window, Rough Island sits like a still memory, its shoreline gently lapped by the withdrawing tide. The island’s form is framed perfectly by the door— its green brush, gnarled trees, and stony edges cradled by the gentle curved causeway providing access at low ride.

The car’s interior edges— a sliver of the door handle, and the wing mirror catching a corner of sky—contrast with the rugged beauty outside, anchoring the viewer in the immediacy of the moment. It’s a quiet juxtaposition: the quiet solitude of nature captured from the familiarity of a human space. The photograph becomes a pause in motion, a frame within a frame, a brief stillness on a journey.