Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Purple sea urchins sit in the depressions they’ve carved over time into the tide pool, minimizing the force of the waves as the tide comes in and out. I came across these urchins in 2004 on a sunny day at Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area in Newport, Oregon. The picture below is a different set of urchins but taken on the same day, I’ve posted this one before but it was years ago.
The sun had set and it was getting dark, so I started to put my camera away but paused when I noticed the waters of the freshwater lagoon weren’t as quiet as they first appeared. This environmental portrait of an alligator swimming with only its head above water is one of my favorites of these magnificent creatures.
A great blue heron waits in a saltwater marsh at Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina. It’s a wonderful park that not only has ocean access and some short hiking trails but also a causeway that runs between saltwater and freshwater lagoons. There are walking paths on each side of the road so as a photographer you can choose your type of water, as can the herons and egrets that hunt here. Although my biggest surprise seeing predators move between the marshes came one day as I was photographing alligators in the freshwater marsh when a large alligator came walking across the road from the saltwater side, the first time I learned they could spend a bit of time in the saltwater before returning to their freshwater home. After that I watched my back a bit more closely, although I never even remotely had any problems with the large reptiles.
Memo Gidley of Chip Ganassi Racing gives an interview on the weekend of the 2001 CART race at Portland International Raceway. Memo became known as Super Sub at the time, I believe this was the third time he was hired to take over a ride mid-season. I always hoped he would find a full-time ride but one of the downsides to racing is that it is hard for drivers like Memo who don’t come with financial backing. He had more luck in sports cars until injuries from a severe crash at Daytona sidelined him for a few years, but it sounds like he’s healed enough to return to racing.
Gil de Ferran prepares to leave the pits during Friday practice for the 2001 CART race at Portland International Raceway. I wish it wasn’t cropped so closely but I had a tough time getting a shot of Gil all weekend and only got this one as his crew moved out of the way. Sadly I never got to see him race again as his team never returned to Portland, and while he didn’t have a great race I was happy when he won the championship for the second year in a row, as I was a fan from his rookie year.
Just a few laps from the finish, race winner Max Papis drives his Team Rahal car on a damp track at the 2001 CART race at Portland. Max was impressive all weekend, in the dry and the wet, and deserved his win from the pole. I love the look of the cars from this era.
One of my favorite portraits of the pup, taken as the sun set and a day or two before the snow finally melted.
What I wouldn’t give to be able to spend just a few minutes again with these two.
While there are multiple homes in the neighborhood that post poetry, this one has a glass enclosure for anyone in the neighborhood to place something to share. On this day of record-breaking heat in early September, someone had placed a lost hat on top. Or perhaps a deliberately discarded hat, given the record-breaking heat.
