Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Twofer

One of the first things I learned when I began to take photography seriously was that you have to take a lot of pictures in order to get one photograph. Years ago while in a workshop with Joyce Tenneson, who is now a renown art/fashion photographer, she said that if you find one good image on a roll of film with 36 frames, you're doing well.
After discovering the couple under the red umbrella that I posted last week, I was surprised, therefore, to find another captivating pair on a patch of sand adjacent to that same pier that afternoon. Spread out on their backs, scores of horseshoe crabs lay there glistening in the sun, their golden color so different from the steel gray, much larger specimens I had seen on that beach before.
"Look at the color!" I immediately blurted to my student.
"What happened, why are they all dead?" she asked.
"I have no idea," I said, "I've never seen this variety here; bigger, darker ones come here to spawn in the spring." Maybe it has something to do with climate change, I thought.
Lifting our cameras, we moved in close and started shooting. I was immediately drawn to this mother and her baby, cuddled together, soaking up the sun, perhaps hoping it would bring them back to life. The baby appeared to be smiling, maybe just happy to be close to its mother until the very end.

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