Ruby Beach, February 2007
One of the most interesting things to me about B&W photography is the effective failure of flare. Contrast- and detail-wrecking casts, Dark Flare, Light Flare, tonal weakness at one end or the other. It’s necessary. It’s the weakness that seems to represent light the best but that doesn’t mean it was there. Ranging beyond a sliding tonal scale suggests backlash, a basic mechanical failure of the eye, a just-woken-up logic of impression and haze.
Perfection is polymorphically insensitive. Indeed, nothing is interesting without a touch of failure. And failure suggests perpetuity like success never can. There’s music in struggle, hollow brag with a treble of sadness, lingering in impressions if not body. You can’t kill the fool, only the sweet innocent dies.
On that note, probably the most interesting part of the image is a visual non-starter: tucked away in the salal behind the biggest of the driftlogs is a grave marker that reads Krystal, taken by the Sea 10/13/2003. God have mercy on the girl.