(gentle music) (birds chirping) (light music) - Part of my work has always been to educate people.

I talk a little about sense of place in my artist statement, the fact that when you are within a place many times and begin to understand it, not only in its physical beauty but in its importance to us as human beings, as part of a community here on earth, that you look at these and start to realize how important it is to preserve these areas.

(bright music) This is like the fourth environmental show that I've put on.

In the past, I've kind of focused on how we've gone wrong and what's being done to correct it.

This was a more personal impression, a more personal experience, but I do think it educates people about what is out there.

I was aware that the barrier islands were out there.

I do make frequent trips to Baltimore and Philadelphia up the Eastern shore because it's such a beautiful drive compared to trying to go through Washington DC.

So I was familiar with the area, I had visited Fisherman's Island on nature hikes.

I'd visited Chincoteague, but that was about my understanding before I started this project.

Once I had decided on light and movement as my subjects, I spent about a year researching and thinking that I would be highlighting one of the environmental concerns there.

That's how my past work has gone.

But once I was able to visit the barrier islands, I was just very taken with the light.

It was just all pervasive.

Light reflected from the sand, from the water, from the sky, and varied very much each time you went out.

The light could change from moment to moment.

I have one photo called "Light" that is one of my favorites.

I was standing there, and the clouds were perfectly mirrored in the water, so they almost seemed to merge.

It was a very spiritual, ethereal experience.

When I decided that light would be one of the themes for the show, I thought I'd really like to take hourly pictures of how the light changed during the summer and winter solstice and the spring and autumn equinox, and I made sure I stood in the same location, tried to get the very same scene for each of these shots.

I then put them in Photoshop, it was a rather laborious process, and decided which little strip to take out of the full frame photo and then compiled them hour by hour into these timeline.

I enjoyed it.

I don't think many of us ever take the time to sit still very long at all, much less through the whole daytime.

(waves whispering) (light music) The other theme, movement.

One of the first things I noticed was varying patterns from currents and wind all over the sand.

These barrier islands are unique in that they are constantly moving.

They're moving westward from what we call overwash drift.

They're moving southward from longshore current.

New inlets are formed during storms.

I thought, "Well, how am I going to show that in photography?

This is a pretty flat landscape."

The only way I was gonna do that is to get photos from a higher elevation, and the only way I was gonna do that was to get a drone pilot's license.

So I took a very intense online course, had to go take a test, and I managed to pass that.

So I was able to do like a photo of an overwash fan or a photo of a spit formation, things that are causing these islands to constantly change in shape.

(gentle music) And I even started to see it in some of the life I saw on the shells with their spiral.

The grasses, the spartina, patterns up in the upper marshes kinda lies down in these kinda like waving patterns.

And then of course the movement of birds.

Because it is on the Atlantic Flyway you get many different birds.

(orchestral music) (light music) I think many of the issues that are on the barrier islands are issues here in Tidewater.

I know some of the organizations in this area, like Lynnhaven River Now, Elizabeth River Project, marsh restoration is part of their good work.

(light music) I think everybody has to find a place that is special to them, that they have this sense of place, and often it might be our own home or a nature park, and we can be active in preserving those, but we can also be active in preserving our own lands where we live.

And I just hope that people who look at these photos will appreciate the different beauty of getting out in these remote areas.

It may be not as remote as the barrier islands but we certainly have many beautiful natural areas here in Tidewater, and I would hope that that would encourage them to look at our area with fresh eyes because they will be seeing marshes and beaches and they'll see the different lights, and hopefully they'll gain an appreciation of that.

(bright music)