It was a cold and dreary January day when I visited Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland. I went there to see and photograph the main attraction, the wild ponies of Assateague.

I saw them. I photographed them. 

They weren't acting too wild. No herd of wild horses galloping through the tide, with water spraying, and manes blowing in the wind for me! 

They just weren't putting on that show today. No, this was a day for foraging and lazing around, much like humans in this kind of weather. If they had a television, they'd probably be sitting on the sofa, snacking on a bowl of oats and watching "Mister Ed". 

So I began wandering around the shoreline and began noticing the patterns in the sand. The best image of that day was completely unexpected, "Fallout". 

FalloutErosion on a beach at Assateague Island, Maryland.

This isn't the kind of image you examine up close. Your eyes need to relax. Backing up several feet from the screen helps. 

You'll see that almost all the tiny pebbles (around the size of a grain of rice or tapioca), have been pulled downward in the image by an outgoing wave. They've left a small lighter colored trail of that downward motion, above them. It appears they've fallen in the image, hence the name. 

This kind of abstract image looks good when printed large. 

"Fallout" is available for purchase in the Abstracts gallery. 

Wishing you the "Peace of Light". 

Thomas Cakalic