Passing Through

As I pass through the landscape I don’t remember all the little details of what I have seen or experienced. I don’t remember the exact spot I was in when I took this photo, but I do recall watching as the mountains met the clouds. I don’t remember my exact thoughts, but I do recall the vastness of the landscape. For me, this image transcends that instant I pressed the shutter release, it reminds me of the experience I had the day I visited White Sands.

White Sands Perceptions Box Set

Waves of Sand, White Sands National Park

Have you ever heard of Lavallette? It’s a small little beach town about one square mile in size and located on a small barrier island of the central/southern coast of New Jersey. My grandparents had summered there for years before they bought two bungalows on Vance Avenue in 1964. At first my siblings, parents and grandparents went “down the shore” for about two weeks around the Fourth of July holiday and another two weeks before the Labor Day weekend. Then, after a few years my grandmother decided she wanted to be there all summer long and I was lucky, I got to go along. That started just before I became a teenager and ended in my late teens.

My first job was at the Lavallette Theater. The building had no air conditioning, the movies and pay were terrible and I don’t think there was ever a full house. But at 16 or 17 years old, who needs money when you get to stay on the beach all day. I spent most of the days with friends, swimming, body surfing and checking out the girls, it was a pretty good life. More than 30 years later I did a project that focused on the very beach in Lavallette where I spent my summers. When taking a photographic eye to the location I noticed things that I had forgotten, or maybe never noticed before. It wasn’t just the new protective grasses and dunes, the painted street signs, or the upgraded boardwalk, it was the ocean itself. I was more aware of the the sounds of the waves and the way they surged on and retreated from the shore line. I watched the waves as they frequently pounded on the surfs edge and occasionally crept up on the beach like a soft breeze.

Often during rough seas large waves would regularly break a couple of hundred yards out from the beach and the churning white surf would kick up seaweed and sand from the bottom. If I close my eyes I can easily imagine the similarity of those large Atlantic waves to the dunes of White Sands National Park. The white of the swirling waves, the regularity of wave pattern, the textures and colors of the churn as the waves move to its final rumble with the beach make the White Sands dunes feel very familiar.

I miss Lavallette and the Atlantic Ocean, but to be able to regularly wander the spectacular White Sands with my camera is a chance few people get to experience.
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Limited addition prints and a box set can be found HERE

Photographing From the Levee in Las Cruces, New Mexico

It was a chilly day of about 50 degrees with a breeze that made it feel colder. When you look behind me, you see the Organ Mountains to the east, and the city of Las Cruces to the west.

Finally at the end we take a look at what I captured on this day.

Thanks for watching.