I was on Harris, alone, sleeping in the back of the van. It was the end of winter, that unsettled stretch when the light can be unexpectedly beautiful but the weather is never far from turning. Sunshine arrived in sudden bursts, followed just as quickly by squalls of hail, sleet, and driving rain.
One afternoon I was sitting on the beach at Scarista, watching the oystercatchers working the shoreline, when the wind dropped away almost completely. The sea flattened and the beach brightened as the sun broke through, lighting the sand and the water with a clarity that felt briefly fragile.
Out to sea, though, the sky told a different story. A dark, heavy patch of cloud was moving steadily towards the shore, its edge clearly defined against the light. The contrast between the calm at my feet and the threat on the horizon felt charged, as if the whole scene was holding its breath.
I set up the camera and made the photograph just before the weather arrived.
Moments later the squall hit the beach in earnest — hail rattling down, wind rising suddenly, the light collapsing into grey. I pulled my hood up and stood there laughing as it did its worst, soaked and cold, exhilarated by how quickly everything had changed.
Before Rain came from that brief pause between conditions — a moment of stillness and light, with the certainty that it wouldn’t last.
This image has become one of my most requested prints.
