Cabin Window

Last fall my friend Jeff Englehardt challenged me to show him why I love the Long Beach peninsula. I sort of internalized that as a project and mentioned in a blog post that it seemed like I needed to create a book to give structure to the attempt. Then on Thanksgiving, as a birthday present (that's Mister turkey to you, bub...) my wife combined a selection of Long Beach photos and some of the words I'd written describing the shots and edited the whole thing into a book which she had made for me. Well, she knocked my socks off. But the project wasn't finished.

 

These recent shots, plus more to go, are all part of the ongoing project to create images that tell the tale of Long Beach - trying to capture visually - express visually - the things that instill deep feelings in me.

 

I suspect that most people will find these shots pretty boring; no cutting edge graphics, not much to elicit a wow. It's all about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts - with a corollary requirement that one look at the parts. A picture not examined in detail is like an unread book.

 

This shot is out the bedroom window of one of our favorite cabins (as I've said before, I really love seeing and shooting through windows). It was New Year's morning. A winter storm had raged all night and rain still pelted the windows and wind still moaned in the rafters. I said to my wife, it was "very elemental". Inside was the epitome of "cozy", warm light reflecting off woods and other natural surfaces - a fire ripping in the fireplace. Thus the contrast between the warmth of hearth and the moods of the outside are brought into focus. That's one of the things I love about this area: it feels like home: warm, safe and familiar. Need to write a blog post :-)

Done