Beachside

Last June I toured Great Britain and Ireland with six other people, my mom and college roommate included. From Prestwick we traveled in a luggage packed van to Inverness, Scotland and drove to the South of England as far as Chichester. We then came back up to Luton where we caught a flight to Ireland and circled its southern portion.

After a week and a half of chasing historical sites and Travel Lodges, we spent the morning on the most serine beach on the English Channel. The water was warm and the air was cold. It was rocky and clean, hedging a small whitewashed town east of Portsmouth. We had a peaceful morning with our pants rolled up splashing in the tide and examining shells.

Fast forward to grey, cold, wintry Utah. For Christmas my mom asked me to make a picture from our trip to that beach. She picked out the frame for it before Thanksgiving, specifying the size. What stood between Thanksgiving and Christmas was a couple of large papers, finals, Christmas shopping, and the regular 8-5. I had also lost a midterm a professor wanted another 'look at.' I tore my room apart looking for it. Where would I put a midterm from last October? Instead of the 'blue book' I found a red bag full of sandy small shells from our trip. The paper chest had already been torn open in search of the midterm so I put in a movie and started looking for more sand, water, sky, surf, breeze.

Louis Vuitton ad, great turquoise. Utah tourism picture, great rocks. Photo shoot of anemic girl, great sand color. But the artificial nature of advertising wasn't catching the feeling of that beach. Exhausted patrons, rich air, shiny wet sand, sea spray and distant waves. So I looked at my pictures from the trip again and printed a large portion of real sand out on shiny paper. There. Then the sky. There. I made an authentic picture from the real thing. It may look like any beach on any sea, but it's specific to that place, at that time. Only those from our van know it, however.

Five movies and an all nighter later, I finished. It was laminated, scanned, and ready to go by December 22.

And I found the midterm, a week too late, mixed with my mail.

Real Sand:

Christmas Morning: