Garbage Art

Remember when I photographed trash on the beach? http://carolleigh.blogspot.com/search/label/trash

There's an artist named Angela Haseltine Pozzi down on the southern Oregon coast who has taken this to a whole new level, creating enormous sculptures of trash she's picked up on the beach. Chris and I went up to Newport Saturday to see her exhibit, which will be here through October and then moves over to the aquarium.

It's exhilarating and it's heartbreaking. She's sorted the trash into various colors and has created the giant fish you see here as well as enormous starfish, a jellyfish that hangs from the ceiling which enables you to become entwined in its tentacles, and a whale skeleton that you can walk through.

Rubber flip-flops are a huge part of ocean trash,and she shows how not only are flip-flops washing up onto the shores, but the rubber matting that the flip-flops have been punched from is also part of the mix -- manufacturers apparently just discarding everything into the sea.

Here you see a giant fish she's created as well as a couple of close-ups that show you the details, and then there's the whale skeleton.

For more information about what she does, here's a story from OregonLive.com: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/07/from_the_garbage_that_washes_u.html

©Carol Leigh

One beach, one lens

In my quest to (1) get more exercise, (2) stretch my photography a bit, and (3) singlehandedly clean up the beaches of Oregon (!), I set out at a minus tide with my camera and just a 10-17mm fisheye lens.

Well, I got a lot of exercise, picked up a lot of trash, and came to the conclusion that a 10-17mm fisheye lens isn't the most versatile lens for this terrain/subject matter. I stopped first at an overlook just south of "my" beach to photograph the rocks below and a sign that is looking a bit rusty and weathered these days. I find the headine, "Welcome to Our Home," quite sad, given the amount of garbage I found on the beach.

By pointing the camera downward I can really exaggerate the curvature of the lens, which is actually kind of cool. In moderation. Here my back is to the ocean and I'm looking across a large tidepool toward the bluffs in the distance.

And then finally you see part of what I picked up on my walk. I put whatever I could find into my plastic bag until my back gave out. During my two-mile walk I picked up trash along just a half-mile of it. What I'm finding is PLASTIC. Lots and lots of plastic. Water bottles, lids, caps, scraps, and parts of white fish containers (like the containers in my previous eel photographs). I'm finding soda straws, styrofoam, baggies, bits of fishing nets, and flip-flops. I left behind a very large bleach container, a plastic shoe (Croc), and a baggie full of dog poop. One can do only so much.

P.S. Happy birthday to you-know-who and also to friend-of-you-know-who. Love, Carol, Chris, and, of course, Abby! ©Carol Leigh

Trash on the tides

I follow the high tide line to see what's washed up onshore and it's disgusting. I'm finding all sorts of little plastic bits, like confetti, and plastic bottles, metal spray cans, plastic lids, plastic baggies, bits of styrofoam, flip-flops, laundry baskets, and other trash that's been tossed overboard and has drifted to shore. The plastic confetti-like stuff I'm sure looks appealing to fish and I hate to think how much of this crap is being swallowed out there.

What I saw this morning made me cry. So from now on, when I go to the beach to shoot, I'm taking a big bag with me and am going to begin removing this garbage as I go. I won't be making a huge impact, but every little bit helps. ©Carol Leigh