Without darkness there is no light, and when things are darkest distant light seems brighter. Metaphor and solace, perhaps, for these troubled times—or at least my meditation on this “grab shot” from the bluffs above Drakes Bay in Point Reyes California.

I made this photo during my recent Photographing Waves workshop.

One doesn’t often think of landscape photography as requiring good reflexes and split-second timing, but sometimes it does, and this image is a case in point. Sunlight, filtered through a gap in the clouds, illuminated the cleft only very briefly. Blink and it was gone.

I underexposed to increase the contrast between the dark cliffs and the sunlight, and shot with the longest lens I had with me. Here’s the EXIF data: 200mm, 1/640 of a second at f/8 and ISO 200, hand held.