There's a difference between lonely and alone.

Lonely is what happens when you're surrounded by people but no one sees you. Alone is what you choose when the world gets too loud and you need to remember who you are.

This pier knows the difference.

I found it on a morning when the fog was so thick you couldn't see ten feet in any direction. The kind of morning where sound travels differently — muffled, intimate, like the world shrunk down to just what's in front of you. And there it was. Weathered, barnacle-worn, stretching into nothing.

It made me think about the people who walk out here. Not the ones taking selfies. The other ones. The ones who come here because they need distance from everything else. 

I've seen them. Walking to the end. Not saying a word. Just looking out at the water, at the fog, at the vast emptiness that somehow makes you feel less empty.

The shot took patience. I needed the water perfectly still, the fog dense enough to erase the horizon but thin enough to let the structure breathe. I waited through three tide cycles before the conditions aligned. Long exposure to turn the water into silk. The pier suspended in white, like it exists outside of time.

What I captured wasn't loneliness. It was sanctuary.