This perfect sand dollar picture, with just the right number of bubbles, was taken on Ocean Beach, in San Francisco, on a beautiful sunny day.
It was the perfect day to be barefoot, down by the shore, looking for seashells. There was a dime a dozen worth of broken, or pecked at, sand dollars scattered everywhere. When I came across this specimen, I knew that it had the potential to look like a million bucks. I dipped it in the water to wash away the sand, wiped it against my rolled-up jeans leg and put it in my pocket until found just the right kind of sea foam.
It was a pretty steep beach so when I dropped it in the surf I had to really scramble. I discovered that, do to their flat, disc-like nature, that the water could pick it up and send it down the slope of the beach with me scrambling after it before it was carried out to sea. Once I figured out how the physics of the slope effected the water speed, I simply got ahead of the sand dollar enough to guess exactly where it would stop. Then, then I dropped to one knee and position myself for the shot.
Yeah right! Remember that one knee I dropped down on? It and the leg and the other leg were soaking wet up way past the rolled-up jean part. I was so busy looking down that I didn’t see the next wave coming. My instincts drove my camera under my shirt as I turned my back against the full force of the wave. I never saw that dollar again. That’s all right. It was worth it. The camera didn’t have a drop on it, I got the picture, I was walking on a beach and it was a beautiful, sunny, million-dollar day.
Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California 2006