"Mirror Image in Sand" - Starfish, St. Augustine, FL

Another image from early in my career as a photographer and a perfect example of what I've always said... "Some of your best photos will always be the result of complete accidents, dumb luck... or both".

Mirror Image in Sand - St. Augustine, FL.

This was shot made during a family vacation to St. Augustine, Florida.  I was about 18 at the time and our family had been staying at the Kon Tiki campground outside St. Augustine.

We'd been collecting shells and other treasures from the sea at the beach one day and set them all aside on the picnic table to dry out.

The next morning as we were packing up for the return trip home to Pennsylvania... I picked up this starfish and was delightfully surprised to see this image magically materialize right before my eyes.

I immediately grabbed my camera (which I think was a Yashica TL Electro-X the time) from the car and started shooting away.  It had a relatively decent quality Soligor zoom lens on it with a macro capability that I didn't use much due to the challenge of holding it steady enough to get good results.  But In this case I got lucky and was able to hand hold it well enough to capture this image on Kodak Plus-X film.  

As an aside I think this also might have been the first time I really had to make a photo under the pressure of a "deadline".  As I recall the family car with pop-up camper attached was pulling out of the campsite as I was shooting :-)