Bay of Cádiz, Spain
Three winters of waiting on the salt pans
Why Salt Roads took three winters, and what a road made of salt looks like on the one morning a year it is perfect.
The first winter I went to the Bay of Cádiz I made eleven frames in nine days. None of them are in the series. I had come for the white, and the white only shows up after a dry week, a north wind and a low sun, all at once.
Learning the calendar of a place
The salt workers know this calendar by heart. Manuel, who has raked the same pans for thirty years, told me to stop coming in December and come in late January instead, when the crust is thickest. He was right. The second winter gave me the road that opens the series.
I shot almost all of it on a Mamiya 7 with the 65 mm lens, Portra 400 rated at 320. The pans are brighter than snow at noon, so I worked in the first and last hour and let the shadows carry the shape of the land.
What three winters bought
Time is the only thing that turns a set of nice pictures into a series. By the third winter people stopped noticing the camera, the light stopped surprising me, and I could wait for a picture instead of chasing one.