My Novel

Restored life saving station circa WWII - Corolla North Carolina (3) a photo by litlesam on Flickr.

I am not a photographer.  But I love to take photographs.  I am an amateur photographer at best.   I always jokingly say give me a four gig chip for my camera and somewhere on that chip I will take a photo that is good.  I took this photo in September while visiting the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  This location is very isolated.  It’s on the northern end of the Outer Banks north of Corolla.  There are no roads  to reach the location.  We took a four wheel drive sand dune tour to reach this location.  The ride was very bumpy.  Sand was blowing all around us.   We were on a tour to see wild horses on the Outer Banks.  Our guide stopped our vehicle at this restored historic life saving station.    The location spoke to me.  I took a quick photo hoping for the best.  When I uploaded the photo I was so pleased.   For me,  the photo had captured the experience.

The photo seems to tell a story.  It has a romantic feel to it along with a historic perspective.    The photo could be a novel in my opinion.  There is a story waiting to be told.  For different reasons it reminds me of a John Ford western landscape, or I can imagine Jennifer O’Neal walking across the sand dunes in Summer of 42.   There is also the history of the shipwrecks and live saving that actually happened at this place many years ago.     Its easy for me to get lost on the Outer Banks.   It’s one of the few places that I visit where I can literally escape for a few days.   Each time I look back at this photo I can escape again for a few minutes.    Unfortunately the cell phone will ring, or the dog will bark to go outside and I am snapped back into reality. 

I have talked for some forty years of sitting down and writing my novel.    Looking at some of my photos I realize that I have my novel already written.  Its story is open to the imagination of the person viewing the photo, ever changing and ever evolving.