D River State Recreation Site

Author's Comments

The D River runs a hundred and twenty feet from lake to sea and then it is gone. There is something almost comic about it, and something quietly worth photographing. At low tide in late spring, with the sun an hour from setting, the river spreads itself thin across the sand and the whole beach becomes a mirror. That is the picture. Not the river itself, which is more rumor than river, but the way it lays a sheen of water across a flat expanse and catches the sky coming down. I tend to work this place with a wide lens and bare feet. The sand is firm where the river crosses it and the reflections shift every few minutes as the tide pulls. If the kite festival is happening, in June or October, the sky fills with color and the ground gives it back doubled. If it is an ordinary Tuesday, you get something simpler - a stretch of wet sand, a thin ribbon of water, and the Pacific holding the far edge of the frame. Golden hour is when this beach earns its keep. The light comes in low across the water and rakes the sand patterns the river has left behind, and for maybe twenty minutes everything goes warm and graphic at once. Park at the lot, walk straight out, and turn south. The compositions are not hidden. You just have to be there at the right hour.

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