Postcards from the Continental Shelf

These photos are excerpted from a larger body of work entitled "Legends of the Sandbar", which will be released in book form in the summer of 2017. The book is an ode to Outer Banks of North Carolina and the surfers who make these beaches their home; to the wild and wooly weather, the shape-shifting sandscapes, the salt-battered architecture, and the commitment of a waterlogged band of misfits to a life lived on the fringes of American civilization. It is a portrait of a place, a people, and a passion, a drama set upon a wayward string of earth dangling on the edge of the continental shelf. The photos in this entry were selected to represent one facet of a broader story: the fractal geometry of convergent moments between earth, ocean, sky, and humanity that I've witnessed on a regular basis while working on this project. Light and water, particle and wave; the sandbar strips life down to its most basic elemental forces, and creates wave upon wave of beautiful instants, flashes of the sublime come and gone in the blink of an eye. Like many who stray forth clutching cameras, I sought to rescue a handful of these instants from the forgetfulness of passing time. These are a few of my favorites.