Walk Way Across the Dunes
Today, I was photographing swimming pools for my pool company. For fourteen years, we've had a barter system whereby I photograph their newly constructed pools and, in return, they service and maintain my pool. After nearly a decade and-a-half, I can say without fear of contradiction that I am an expert at swimming pool photography. So this afternoon, I was at a brand new, 15000 square foot, "mac-man" lodged in the dunes overlooking the ocean. The pool was all right: I guess what made it somewhat photogenic was its location and its proximity to the ocean. But for about ten minutes, I became really preoccupied with photographing the walkway through the dunes and down onto the beach. The raw file capture below was rgb color, of course, but with a small digital back rub, I ended up with this image.
And what's cool is after fourteen years of doing this, the pool guy, Mikie, knows to leave me alone when I wander off, and I start to photograph random things. In fact, by now, he's always really interested to see what has attracted my attention.
Alex in the Clouds
Yesterday was an incredible early July evening on the beach in Southampton. All of the Saturday's crowds had left by the time my immediate family and I arrived an hour or so before sunset. The brilliant white clouds were paint strokes on a pristine blue canvas. We sat in our beach chairs watching the clouds, the ocean, and my son, Alex, who is an avid skim boarder, sail across the wet sand and retreating backwash of hide tide waves breaking on the shore. After he came out of the ocean, he put on his T-shirt, and challenged all this family members to see who could be the best impromptu rapper. I photographed him as he listened to his aunt's attempts. I love the green of his T-shirt against the blue evening sky over the ocean, and I love him.
Welcome to the North Pole...
...Well not really. But it sure looks like it in some parts of my immediate environment. I live on the South Fork of the East End of Long Island: it's a peninsula that sticks eastward out into the Atlantic Ocean. Now, hold your left hand out in front of you with your palm facing you. Look at the fore and middle fingers. I live about 3/4 of an inch on the middle finger from where your fingers form a V at your palm. Between your two fingers is the Peconic Bay, and below your middle finger is, of course the ocean.
I took the image below yesterday afternoon. I live right up the street from the Peconic Bay, this is what it looks like in January. Because it's tidal, and because we have a big tide here, there is alot of ice movement even when the salt water is frozen.
The other two images are from the ocean beach which is about a five minute drive from my house. Since it snowed earlier this week, it's been real cold with a lot of northerly wind. There hasn't been much thawing, and the wind has been sculpting the drifting snow. I've always loved bundling up and going out onto the beach and into the dunes for a couple hour's walk. Looking both at the ocean and especially the frozen bay, it's hard to imagine swimming in it in another five and-a-half months.
Snow Dune
As I mentioned in my last post, I've spent a lot of time wandering through coastal sand dunes in the winter, especially after snow storms. The storm we had a couple of days dumped a foot or so on Eastern Long Island. So, I made several photographs out in Napeaque, one of the few remaing, sparsely developed areas left between Southampton and Montauk. I especially like this one. If you want, you can see an entire portfolio of my early snowscapes from Plum Island, Ma. I've set them up as a separate tab under"Phatlandscapes" on my home page; just click on the Black & White Beachscapes link and follow the navigation buttons.
Offshore in Mexico
Middle to late November always leaves me thinking about being at sea. It's the season for southbound sailboat deliveries on the Atlantic coast of the US. Delivering a sailboat from, say, Montauk to Tortola ... is kind of like being a New York City cop. It's 98.5% of the time just doing your watch, fixing the mechanical problem of the moment, eating (DEFINITELY NO ALCOHOLIC DRINKING), reading, reading, more reading, cooking and bread baking (for me), writing, listening to Herb (weather guy @1500 hrs), sleeping, checking way points and keeping a weather eye on the radar and the GPS, and then .... the other 1.5% of the time can be sheer terror. There is no lonelier feeling than being at sea, especially on a sailboat less than 3o meters, out on the big bad blue, in the middle of a full blown storm: not a gale, but a rip snortin', I-want-to-make-you-puke, hear-it-in-the-stays storm. You feel very,very small and very, very alone. Over two hundred miles offshore, no one is going to fly out to rescue you; 500 miles or more offshore whatever happens, you're sticking with the boat.
The image above was from a day cruise across the bay off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on arguably the nicest, finest, power yacht I've ever been on: the Machiavelli. The occasion was a good friend's 45th birthday. His bride, my good friend, flew 26 of their closest and dearest down for his birthday celebration from NYC. And without going into details, it was a glorious day. As we crossed the bay, whales were breaching, and the weather in late January was extraordinary. The inside of the vessel smelled wonderful: it smelled of well oiled teak, salsa, Mexican chicken, fresh green salads, perhaps a little of spilled tequila that we had for lunch, and of course the sea.
I made a lot of exposures that day. A couple of them were all right. My friend who was celebrating his birthday handed me his digital camera; I'm not sure what it was, I think it was a Canon, and I loved the instantaneous aspect of it. I became a shooting fool as we returned back to where we had departed that morning. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. I saw the mist filtering the coast astern, and I picked up my Hasselblad for one last exposure. Topside, it was getting chilly as the sun set in the west. Someone buddied up next to me, and he had a large pour of Tequila in one hand for me. I smiled, actually, I laughed, tossed it back and felt the warmth swim through my belly.
I watched the light change over the coast behind me. I thought about Edward Weston sailing to Mexico from Southern California in the mid 1920's on a slow tramp steamer with his 8x10 wooden camera and his girl friend Tina Modotti. I kind of nodded at the misty coastline behind me. And then I thought about my days and nights, and sometimes, weeks at sea delivering sailboats. It always feels good to have water under my feet.