Hanna to Snow II

ARCHIVAL DIGITAL PRINTS, SIZES VARY, 2009

I was terrified of waves as a small child – one traumatic event and they were sworn indefinitely. I was not a beach goer as a teenager. So when I found myself moving to the Jersey Shore I didn’t think I would be so taken (so quickly) by the beach and the ocean at the end of my street. One summer of playing in the waves and I was totally and completely enchanted by them, still a little frightened – but a little fear is good in the face of a powerful force like mother nature. One fall morning I woke up to the densest fog I had ever seen – Hurricane Hanna was on her way. My dog, Jonah, and I walked to the beach where we were confronted by the largest “wall” of white I had ever seen – I could barely make out where the beach, ocean and sky met – gleefully I took out my cellphone to take photos of these subtle shades, but was at first disappointed and then excited by the limitations of my iPhone’s ability to “white balance”. Every image was a wild shade of blue, green, purple or pink; not one represented what I was seeing.

That winter, it snowed, not little storms but big swirling snow storms – I hadn’t seen snow like that in almost three years (I had been living in the south). I immediately went back to my beach to experience, snow, salt, water and sand… this time I went with my brand new Nikon D300 and while I was thrilled with this camera’s ability to “white balance”, I realized that it was somewhere between truth and fiction that my experience of the beach and it’s waves existed. “Hanna to Snow” is an attempt at the emotive – what I felt, but also what I saw, while walking the shore of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The diptychs are a comparison of emotions, technology, weather and time. The single images are study of the ocean. It had been a long time since I took photos just to take photos… I wasn't not sure where this work would take me, but for the time was happy to take it all in, just me, my dog and my cameras.