Pegasus

This is a big picture, but quite clearly an extremely lucky one. It is said that luck is the residue of design, but on this occasion, I think it would be disingenuous to suggest that we can attribute the capture of a flying horse to a preconceived plan.

There is a spit of sand that only appears on Bantham beach near low tide and, with a long lens, the waves can be quite pronounced behind the sand. When I scouted the site, I noted the potential of the canvas in front of me, but realised timing would be critical.

Given sunrise and low tide were just after 6 am, this meant for an extremely early start and a cold one too. The only angle that would work for me, was to be lying in the shallow sea water in front of the spit. The higher my body, the poorer the angle, so getting wet was unavoidable. The temperature, with the northerly wind, was only about three degrees above freezing.

Occasionally there’s a split second of time when everything falls into place and the end result cannot be better and the frame cannot be repeated. This was one such moment and what was most satisfying, was that we were wrapped before 90% of the nation was even awake. Our lunch was everyone else’s breakfast.

- David Yarrow