Windy Day

The isolation or absence of others is perfect.

What I like about this one and "Driftwood Beach" is that it looks like you're going out when the light isn't optimal and making something interesting of it. I can appreciate the patience of "waiting for the light," but after a few weeks of not being out in the landscape with a camera (too rainy, too flat, too bright, no shadows, harsh shadows, empty sky, why bother with so many good negatives in the files to print?, etc.), "let's get on with it" starts to become a more attractive approach.

Thank you TI and David. Lee Anne White, a photographer from Georgia, wrote, "If you shoot when no one else does, you get images no one else gets." I didn't go out with that necessarily in mind, but, as it's easy to see from the deserted beach, I did indeed get what no one else was even trying to get.

Recently I spent time along the deserted sand spits and estuaries of the outer Columbia River where it empties. Lewis and Clark ended their epic journey by carving names into a tree there. So this photograph echoes strongly for me. It can be a gently primal experience to stand quietly in the midst of such desolation and mentally run the clock backward. And given this location, it may be a foreboding exercise to run the clock in the other direction.

I agree, Ken. When isolated enough, it's easy to be overtaken by a sense of timelessness.

Or a sense of, how can I be so arrogant as to simply stand here, when this place has been for thousands of millennia, and I have been but for a handful of decades. Just who do I think I am? Because whomever that may be, I am by comparison certainly not. It's a revelation of scale, but not necessarily of size.

i love how photography and speaking about photographs can be the spark for all sorts of realizations/ideas/conversations. loving everything about this photo, and totally digging the ensuing discusion.

Most excellently seen!