Pathway Above The Bay

One of the first things you learn in commercial photography is to always be prepared for the unexpected. Backup cameras, spare lenses, extra cables — when you’re on location with a client, you plan for everything.

The one thing you can’t have a backup for is your own health.

It was October, and I found myself back in Rhodes for the tenth or eleventh time — having been there just eight weeks earlier. I love this island deeply, but I’ll be honest, I was starting to wonder if I’d got too familiar with it photographically and needed some fresh inspiration elsewhere.

Still, there were a few spots I felt had more to give me. So I emailed Jannis — who I’ve been hiring cars from for years — and arranged three days on the road.

Then I got ill.

Nothing dramatic, just the kind of thing that makes getting out of a warm bed before dawn feel genuinely heroic. I drugged myself up and carried on, partly out of stubbornness, partly because the hire car was already booked. My eldest daughter Gracie came with me each morning, helped carry kit, and didn’t complain once.

Lindos was my best morning. Though even then I wasn’t thinking clearly — I made a couple of stupid mistakes I only noticed later in post-processing.

We started at the Chapel of Saint George Pachymachiotis, which I’d photographed two or three times before but wanted to try from a slightly different angle. We weren’t alone — a Greek cat had claimed the chapel roof and was watching the dawn unfold with considerably more composure than I was managing.

After reassembling my tripod — which had decided to fall apart at precisely the wrong moment, proving that even backup plans have gaps — we pushed on further out of the village.

And that’s when we found a second chapel I genuinely don’t remember ever seeing. Small, quiet, looking down towards the beach below. It perked me up better than any painkiller.

We kept walking. The path hugged the cliffside below the acropolis, opening out to a view across the Aegean towards the mountains. Down in the natural harbour, a handful of boats sat still in the warm early light.

I stopped. I had to.

A private house sat along the path with a beautiful old doorway — exactly the kind of detail that anchors a composition and gives the eye somewhere to rest before it wanders out across the bay. I set up, waited for the light, and took a few frames.

This is one of them.