Padre Island South Texas

Arrived at the beach on June 7th.!! Padre Island, Texas. 68 miles of beach you can drive on and camp anywhere. It’s almost empty as well. I am  sharing it with toxic waste, lots of trash, birds, seaweed and nesting Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtles. Got to see one come up and lay her eggs yesterday. The trash is really apparent, coming in from boats, Mexico and Texas. I guess Louisiana contributes its share as well. Lots of plastic and weird stuff you don’t want to touch. But the water is warm and the light is quite nice. Mostly overcast but with some good clouds to photograph. Working a good deal with time exposures. Seems movement is the message. Everything seems to be timeless right now and it seems that to capture this landscape I need a rather large slice of time to record it on film. Figures I’ve spend so much energy putting together a 4×5 system that I can hand hold, then decide to latch it down to a tripod for long exposures. On to Galveston and the beginning of the trek up the Gulf Coast.

on the beach

Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle

Eggs in Nest

Transferring eggs for incubation off site