The dragon spine

Crane Beach, Massachusetts (March 19, 2005)

This is my favorite image from the Crane Beach dragon. The light was rapidly fading, and the sky was turning the color of fire as the sun was setting behind the hills surrounding the beach. While I was preparing to get home, I watched for a last time the remains of the dragon. He was still there after uncountable ages, laying on the beach, culled by the slow waves of the ocean, caressed by the floating ice left from the long New England winter. I set the tripod on the cold humid sand, and opened the shutter for a 30 seconds long exposure. Recording many waves, recording the drift of some lose piece of ice, capturing the blue photons scattered by the wet weary bones. Bones made of wood, like the careen of that ancient Viking boat that first reached this continent centuries before Columbus, challenging the ice, the ocean, and the sea dragon that here met its fate.