Acting on a tip from a friend, I found myself with my camera on a tripod in front of a long row of sand sculptures at the beach in Revere, MA the other day. It was just about to rain. That can make you hurry.

This is what I got.

Of course, and this has happened before, when confronted with so much sheer talent and skill, are my pictures about anything beyond just documentation or, should they be? It seems an ultimate form of pretentiousness, doesn't it, to say nothing about being presumptuous.  To think you could make your own art off of someone's else's?

Mess with it? Alter it? Record it? Just get it in the camera?

I don't really have the answer here. But it often seems that photo projects, or perhaps art projects are a problem to be solved. Part of our fascination with the world as we work to render parts of it with a camera is how to get it to do what we want. Or, more accurately, it's first to  define what we want it to look like THEN get it to look the way we want.

Artists are born, not made(?) Partially true and partially not true. Yes, artists are born with some proclivities towards creative processes. But everyone's creative. Perhaps with artists that door is swung a little more open. I for one, can't not make art of something. I can't turn "art" off because I am in front of someone else's art with a camera. Making art is, after all, what I do.

Decay has been big for me for a long time:

natural:

I made this of erosion in Highlands , North Carolina in about 1988 in 8 x 10.

and man made:

from Peddocks Island  shot in 2005.