I’m taking Blogging 101 and yesterday’s assignment had me surfing the web, exploring and commenting on new-to-me blogs. I happened to be browsing blogs on the Oregon coast, and I found one that made me stop and assess my objectives for outershores. I even re-read my About page, which is pretty funny because I read it just a few days ago, for Introducing Myself & theoutershores, our first assignment.
The post that caught my attention is Day 5: Half a Day’s Photography is Better than None. It’s day 5 in a series about a photography field trip on the southern Oregon Coast. The posts in this series are kind of a journal, full of insights about how the author, Kerry Mark Leibowitz maximizes his chances of a successful field photography session. The photography is unusually beautiful, but I was drawn in by Kerry’s casual transparency about his thought processes for solving various outdoor photography challenges. I use the word causal to describe the writing because I was so engrossed by the journal I didn’t even realize, at first, how much I was learning. The tips, even the technical ones, didn’t detract from the journal narrative at all, which was pleasing for me because it allowed me to connect, on a large scale, with the whole photo session.
The reason I had to re-read my About page was because I really don’t say much about the role photos play in my posts and nothing about how I think about photography. I’m no photographer, but I still have something to say about it. The absence of any words about photography probably reflects my evolution with theoutershores, but Kerry’s journal has helped me rethink what I now see as an omission, especially what words I might choose to fill the gap. I’m going to be spending some more time with Kerry’s Lightscapes Nature Photography Blog. The things I’ve learned already are going to be good for my posts, starting immediately. If I can improve my landscape, and my more intimate nature photography, I’m going to enjoy theoutershores all the more, and you will be a beneficiary too. And, there will be an early morning, sometime soon, on a on a lonely beach with no footprints in sight, not even my own, when I get a photo of a surfperch I’m quite pleased with. And maybe a pleasing a beachscape is in my not to distant future too.
theoutershores 
Thanks very much for the shout out and I’m gratified beyond words that you’ve found my blog to be of value to you.
Not incidentally, I’ve found quite a bit here to keep me engaged for a long while. I’ve just spent some very productive time perusing your entries going back a few months, including but not limited to your posts on this past spring’s proliferation of velella and your accounting of seastar wasting syndrome. This blog is a terrific natural history resource and please accept my sincere thanks for developing and maintaining it.