Richard Perin, Melancholy night by the sea (SEASCAPE 2026)

From the shoreline, the sea stretches out in layered greys, its surface textured by wind and memory. Two men stand at the water’s edge, barely more than silhouettes against the fading light. Their backs are turned, their forms small and still, facing the horizon where the sun has already started to slip. The ocean, vast and indifferent, seems to absorb them. This black and white photograph is a meditation on melancholy—not sorrow, but the quiet ache of impermanence. The men are not the subject, the landscape is, but the men are dissolving into it. Their presence is a whisper, a pause. The sea, in contrast, is eternal, its shifting tones rendered in silver and shadow. The image draws deeply from the legacy of David Moore, whose work often captured the emotional undercurrents of Australian life—its solitude, its scale, its silences. It also echoes the contemporary lyricism of Paul Blackmore, whose seascapes and human figures explore the fragile relationship between body and water, identity and place. Like Blackmore’s 'At Water’s Edge', this photograph is less about narrative than atmosphere. Technically, the image is composed with a long lens and a narrow aperture, compressing distance and sharpening the horizon line. The over exposed sun is intentional—softening the sea’s surface, giving the sky a bruised texture. The tonal range is restrained, almost austere, with mid-greys dominating and only the faintest highlights tracing the men. This is a landscape — and one that shows the differences between people, between land and sea, between the moment and its memory. It invites the viewer to linger in the space between presence and absence, to feel the pull of the tide not just on the shore, but on the soul.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.