Cape Henlopen Beach Sand

We haven’t been to Henlopen this year but, here is a photographic trace in the beach sand from years past.

The waves wash in and create serpentine striations in the sand. Critters dig their holes back into the wet sand as the water recedes, and the result is this super macrocosmic landscape. Scale is given by the shell and piece of dried seaweed. If these weren’t there we might be looking down on the desert from an airplane, or perhaps a Martian landscape complete with craters and traces of long lost flowing water.

I take pictures of wave washed sand every chance I get, and I find the tan sand of the middle Atlantic beaches to be especially perfect to making the best sand patterns. Late afternoon light is best to pick out the subtleties in the ‘sandscape.’ I don’t remember the other particulars of this photograph among literally a thousand or more. However, I can tell that the shell was added after the fact because there should be indications of the water’s leave taking, and there aren’t. I will definitely go to the beach this coming week to take more sand photographs.

I envision a gallery wall covered in a grid of beach sand photographs. Across the room the grid is subtle, and the wall simply looks tan, with other "Waterworks" pastels, mixed-media distressed paintings, and photographs hung on it.