On the boat with a Fisherman

How interesting it is: time passes, and you forget the names, but the images and even the smells stay in your long-term memory. I had a couple of free days and decided to find a boat, venture out to sea, and feel the waves. They say that when the sea is calm, the waves resemble the movements of a mother lulling her child. Through some kind people, I managed to find a man with a boat who goes fishing every day, depending on the weather, leaving around 4 PM and returning around midnight. That was exactly what I was craving.

The size of the boat didn’t matter much to me. And so, I met The Fisherman. The sea was his life. He had given it more than thirty years, and it had taken most of what he had. He was just 53, but the salt and sun had aged him so much that he looked far older. The lines on his face were deep, carved by the wind and worry, by days of squinting against the bright water. His eyes were still sharp, their blue matching the sea, and there was a quiet pride in the way he carried himself.

He had spent $15,000 on his boat, a sum that would make most men hesitate. The navigation system, just 1,000 euros more, seemed like a mere drop in the bucket. But the man knew it was never about the money. Before boarding the boat, I had taken a photograph of it while it was parked, not realizing it belonged to him.

Photographing him felt like stealing time from a place where time stood still. The fisherman, sitting on his boat with his rough hands and steady gaze, seemed like a figure from an old story. I took my pictures carefully, trying not to disturb him, yet I felt his awareness. People like him—rare and unassuming—don’t like to be stared at, yet at the same time, they want to appear good and presentable. The best way to capture a moment without disrupting it is to become a mirror. If a person understands how they are being seen, they won’t feel afraid.

His movements were as sure as the tide. You could see it in the way he leaned into the wind, the way he dropped the net into the sea, steering the boat in a serpentine path, knowing exactly where to cut through the waves.

After the net was dropped, it became the most peaceful time. I lay down in the small space meant for fish barrels and nets and practically fell asleep, cradled by the gentle, lulling motion of the sea.

HHow interesting—usually, as a photographer, I regret not bringing a certain lens or wish I had a gimbal with me for a video, or maybe a lens with a wider aperture. But that evening, everything was quiet, including my mind. My Canon 90D and 24mm lens with an f/2.8 aperture felt just right, as though nothing could have been more suitable.

At sunset, the fisherman began collecting the nets. Along with four large fish and some barbun, we had caught a couple of lionfish. He separated them gently, with the respect of an old seafarer who understands the danger hidden in beauty, and released them back into the deep, and let them slip back into the deep, so thier poison left to the sea.

When the job was done, he gathered all the fish in the net and helped me off the boat. I offered to assist in extracting the fish from the net, but that was a privileged task, one that belonged to his wife. It was their intimate time, a ritual I was not permitted to witness.

However, I returned the next day to see that same shore again and capture some pictures with my tripod. Here’s what I got.