She sells

I thought I had collected sea shells etc. selectively, but over the years it still ended up being far too many. (More than pictured!) Mostly from two points on the edge of two oceans: Laguna Beach, California, and Mandurah, Western Australia. (Though I grew up on the coast, the surf at my home beach is cold and rough, spitting out broken sand dollar fragments and little else.)

 In my 30s I learned that the accumulated effects of tourists removing seashells from beaches are measurable and detrimental to the beach's ecology - did you know? So these days you'll catch me treasuring the ones I have, and enjoying the rest where I find them. 

Sister and sea, before dinner

Sea air

Kathryn again

I am quite in like with that diffuse light that comes through lowered shades during the day. Kathryn at the beach house.

Skyped with my sister, brother-in-law, and their bebe again. Celebrated Thanksgiving with some lovely family-of-friend in an Ohio farmhouse. (I don't think I'd ever been in a farmhouse before.) I'm still there—in Ohio, that is—and it is so good to get somewhere new, get out of my routine and see new things.

Curiouser

Excuse me, sir and madams
you're not the only ones who've got cameras.

The advance on a Diana makes this plasticky, ratchety sound. When I was advancing the film after this shot, the two cousins next to me turned to look at it with these hilarious amazed expressions. Eighteen-year-old says, "What is that?!"

Kathryn over the sea in Diana's eye

K. again. I love her in these; she looks sturdy and ferocious about life, which she is. A firmly-set-chin sort of girl. I don't want anything to ever ever lessen that.

I got a roll of 120 back just today so I have a few older Diana shots to be sharing over the next couple days.

August, walking on water

See those tiny figures? Look like they're standing on the water? I think it's called paddleboarding. They must have had a beautiful view of the setting sun from out there.

More beach cousins [playlist]

I really loved having all these willing victims around to populate my pictures. I think having a person in it can keep almost any picture from being boring.























And these are the ones Littlest Cousin took:

From where I can hear the breaking waves

You know those movie sequences where the character gets more and more harried and things just keep building up around them, the toddler's crying and the husband's all "HAVE YOU SEEN MY _____?" banging around in the background and that thing on the stove starts to boil over and there's this accelerating lunatic music in the background? And just when it looks like she might be able to get everything under control, the neighbor's dog starts barking. And then you go over and shoot the dog?

Right. My evening = like that.

But now I am with my computer and headphones on and the noise-canceling switch flipped, and I have some pictures from a new roll of film for you.

These are all family membahs, by the way.

Peace.

The sweetest portion of each day here

...is the time we spend in the water.

Something weird: how it is when you wipe out and you're being held underwater in the thick of a break that's tumbling into shore. There's nothing to do but wait until you can come up. You can't breathe or see. It only lasts three or four seconds, but they're the clearest, sharpest seconds. There's nothing you can do but hold your breath and keep your eyes closed and wait. And you are calm. It is calm.

I'll have some pictures from the Zenit for you tomorrow. :)