Memories of Summer

Memories of Summer, Brookings, Oregon
(c) Darlene Lyon  Kruse - All Rights Reserved


Let me say, straight up, from the beginning, that this is not the best photograph I've ever made, not even the best I made on that particular day.  But it reminds me of a sunny, fun day I spent on the Oregon coast.  Today, here in Ashland, it is wet and gray.  We are experiencing the first storm of the season, & it's a doozy.  Clouds hang low on the mountains.  It's too wet to get out to photograph.  The possibility of snow on Siskiyou Pass.  A taste of what's to come.  And when I started looking at photographs for my blog this weekend, this photo just said what I felt -- I'm not ready for winter -- I want more 75 degree, sunny days before diving into umbrellas, jackets, gloves and boots. 

This photograph was made last summer (June 30) when I was on a scouting trip with David Lorenz Winston, looking for locations for a summer coastal workshop we were doing together.  On the beach near the Port of Brookings, the Banana Belt of the Oregon coast.  A bit of history:  On a photo trip here in the mid-1990s with a photographer-friend, we watched a dead whale (gray whale if I remember correctly) being buried right at this same stretch of beach (somewhere I have slides of a worker digging a trench and then burying the whale).  Anyway, the family was nowhere to be seen but there was something in all the beach toys, towels , flip flops etc that appealed to me. And the warmth and color definitely appeal on this gray, drizzly, autumn day in Southern Oregon.

Metadata:  Photographed with Nikon D300.  24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 70mm (35-mm equivalent = 105mm).  ISO 200.  1/350 at f/6.7